AUN, Ilyas Kashmiri
ISLAMABAD: Ilyas Kashmiri, one of al-Qaida's most active leaders, has been killed in a US drone attack in Pakistan's South Waziristan tribal region, locals, officials and spokesman of the dreaded '313 Brigade' said on Saturday.
It is always difficult to confirm reports in Pakistan's volatile tribal areas which are no-go areas for journalists, but information pouring in from Pakistani spies and tribal journalists indicate that the one-eyed Kashmiri is indeed dead.
On Saturday, a man, Abu Hanzallah, who called himself a spokesman of '313 Brigade', a unit of Harkat-ul-Jihad-al- Islami (HuJI) faxed a letter to some media organizations confirming Kashmiri's death in a drone strike on Friday. He mentioned in the message that Kashmiri's death would be avenged.
Last week during her visit to Pakistan, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton had mentioned Kashmiri as one of the top five al-Qaida and Taliban leaders.
A former officer of Pakistan military's special services group (SSG), Ilyas Kashmiri was suspected of carrying out several militant attacks in India and Pakistan, including the one on Pakistan's naval air station (PNS) Mehran in Karachi on May 22. His '313 Brigade' was believed to be behind the high-profile operations, including the terrorist attack on Mumbai in 2008, in which 166 people were killed. The '313 Brigade' specialises in coordinated and organized simultaneous attacks on targeted places. Kashmiri merged his militant outfit into the ranks of al-Qaida but maintained a separate identity for his group as well.
Kashmir was also said to be the operational head of al-Qaida. The US blamed him for organising brazen attacks inside Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Washington offered $5 million for any information that would locate the renegade Pakistani military official.
On Friday, two drone strikes targeted compounds near Wana, the headquarters of South Waziristan. Later some militants operating in the region claimed that Kashmiri was killed in one of the strikes.
Kashmiri's death had previously been misreported. In 2009, Pakistani intelligence and the US pronounced him dead in drone attack. The CIA called it a great success in the war on terror. But those reports proved wrong when Kashmiri was interviewed by slain Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad in North Waziristan.
Kashmiri's death will be a serious blow to Islamist militant outfits after the killing of al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden on May 2 in a covert US operation in Pakistan's Abbottabad town.
Ilyas Kashmiri, 47, had a long history of guerrilla warfare. Like Mullah Omer, he also lost one eye fighting the former USSR forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Later, while working with Kashmiri militants against India, he became famous with the Pakistani military establishment for escaping from an Indian jail where he was detained.
The former military ruler, Pervez Musharraf, banned his HuJI in 2002. He was also arrested in connection with an assassination attempt on Musharraf but was released due to lack of evidence.
Kashmiri was born in 1964 in Bimbur (old Mirpur) of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in 1964. He got a degree in mass communication from Islamabad's Allama Iqbal Open University. However, during student life, he had strong affiliations with jihadi outfits. His first exposure into the field of militancy was through the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation front (JKLF), then the HuJI and ultimately the '313 Brigad'.
