A missile strike in Pakistan tribal region earlier this week is believed to have killed Abu Laith al-Libbi, who is believed responsible for planning some suicide bombing attacks in Afghanistan.
... al-Libi, a Libyan who was about 40 years old, was a longtime lieutenant of Osama bin Laden, the American officials said. He played a pivotal role in recruiting and training operatives in the mountainous tribal areas of western Pakistan, they said. Al Qaeda has built makeshift compounds where both Pakistani militants and foreign fighters conduct training and planning for terrorist attacks.
The American missile strike this week could signal an escalation in American covert action aimed at killing terrorist leaders and dismantling their networks in the tribal areas.
Both the American military and the Central Intelligence Agency fly Predator surveillance aircraft armed with Hellfire missiles along the mountainous border of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
American military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the subject involves covert operations, said the attack early Tuesday against a safe house in Khushali Torikel, a village in North Waziristan, was not carried out by a Pentagon-operated Predator.
A spokesman for the C.I.A. declined comment on the missile attack and on the reports of Mr. Libi’s death.
Some Pakistani news accounts reported that several other people were killed in the attack.
From the Washington Post:
Libi is the first major al-Qaeda leader known to have been killed or captured in Pakistan in more than two years. In December 2005, a senior operational planner, Abu Hamza Rabia, was killed in a Predator attack in North Waziristan, not far from where Libi is believed to have died.
Another senior al-Qaeda commander, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, was captured in late 2006 in Turkey after departing Pakistan in an attempt to reach Iraq. He was held for several months in a secret CIA prison overseas before his transfer to the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in April 2007.
The U.S. military announced a $200,000 reward last October for information leading to Libi's capture. In June, he was targeted in a U.S. rocket attack on a Taliban compound in Afghanistan's Paktia province, but survived. ...
One Afghan militant leader who worked with Libi, speaking on condition of anonymity, said by telephone late Thursday that the Libyan "was considered to be like the right hand of Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Dr. Zawahiri is considered to be the right hand of Osama bin Laden, so you can understand his position."
U.S. military officials have said Libi frequently crossed the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and served as an important conduit among al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other militant groups in the region. He appeared in several propaganda videos distributed on the Internet by al-Qaeda, most recently in April.
The W-P identified the village as Khushali Torikhel, located in North Waziristan. The Beeb put it as being near the village of Mir Ali. Here's a locator map:
Kandahar province, where Canadian troops operate, doesn't adjoin North or South Waziristan (Kandahar would be down and to the left). Khost, in Paktia province, had al Qaeda training camps located nearby. Tora Bora was another pre-9/11 al Qaeda stronghold. It was Osama bin Laden's last known location before he disappeared, likely into Pakistan, in late November/early December 2001.