(MENAFN- The Peninsula) A senior member of Al Qaeda and three other suspected militants were killed in Pakistan yesterday when a US drone attacked a house they were in, Pakistani military officials and Taliban said.
The attack came a day after Pakistani forces killed a major Al Qaeda leader, Adnan Ql Shukrijumah. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation had offered $5 million for his capture in connection with a plot to bomb the New York subway system.
Four Pakistani military officials said a senior member of Al Qaeda was among the dead in the strike by a missile-firing drone yesterday. They identified him as Omar Farooq and said he operated in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Three Taliban fighters said Farooq, 38 years old, was from Karachi, where he had been a religious teacher before joining Al Qaeda after the 2001 attack on New York.
He was close to Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al Zawahiri, the former and current heads of Al Qaeda, and was a key figure in running the group's operations and finances in Pakistan and in Afghanistan, where he also helped direct attacks against Nato troops, the Taliban said.
Al Qaeda is closely allied with the Taliban and often work together. One Pakistani official said Farooq, also called Ustad Farooq, was in charge of Al Qaeda's regional media department.
"He is the first Pakistani to be appointed to a senior-level position in Al Qaeda," a military official said.
"He has been key in pushing al Qaeda to focus on South Asia and helped evolve al Qaeda's South Asia policy and specifically its anti-India activities. It was on his advice that al Qaeda officially declared the Pakistan army an apostate army."
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