Reuters Canada : Al-Zawahri past visitor to Pakistani madrasa

Al-Zawahri past visitor to Pakistani madrasa

By Anwarullah Khan | October 31, 2006

KHAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - Al Qaeda Number Two Ayman al-Zawahri was a past visitor to a madrasa destroyed by a Pakistan Army helicopter attack, but he was not there when the missiles struck on Monday, senior Pakistani security officials said.

Several other al Qaeda luminaries had passed through the religious school run by pro-Taliban cleric Maulana Liaqatullah, who was killed in the airstrike along with around 80 of his followers, the officials told reporters a day after the attack.

Among the other known militants to have frequented the madrasa at Chenagai village, near the Afghan border in the Bajaur tribal region of northwest Pakistan, was Abu Obaida al-Misri.

An Egyptian, like Zawahri, al-Misri was identified as the mastermind of a plot to blow up U.S.-bound airliners flying from London's Heathrow airport that was foiled earlier this year.

The officials say he was a mentor to Rashid Rauf, a British Muslim arrested in Pakistan in August, who was said to be a key figure in the conspiracy.

No major militant figure was believed to have been present when the army attacked, and orders for the assault were given in anticipation that the militants were about to be sent to fight -- possibly to launch suicide attacks on NATO and Afghan forces.

"The madrasa was under surveillance since July when the activity started picking up pace," said a senior official.

Last January, a CIA-operated Predator missile attack targeted Zawahri in Bajaur's Damadola village near the Afghan border.

Intelligence officials said a handful of al Qaeda operatives at a parley hosted by Liaqatullah were killed. But Zawahri was a no-show and reports that al-Misri was killed proved incorrect.

The Pakistan government had been trying to persuade militant tribesmen to agree peace terms along the lines of accords brokered earlier in the two most restive tribal regions -- North and South Waziristan.

But officials said Liaqatullah and his comrade Maulana Faqir Mohammad, who rallied fighters at the site of the destroyed madrasa immediately after the attack, ignored all warnings.

he officials showed reporters aerial footage shot through a night vision lens of rows of men exercising before daybreak, just an hour before the missiles struck the compound.

TRIBALS SEETHING

Tribesmen said the dead, mostly young men aged between 15 and 25, were merely students. But, President Pervez Musharraf, speaking at a seminar in Islamabad, said they were all militants.

"We know who they were. They were doing military training," Musharraf said.

More than 15,000 armed tribesmen protested against the attack in Khar, Bajaur's main town, and Islamist politicians stoked anti-Western and anti-Musharraf sentiment among ethnic Pashtuns in several towns around North West Frontier Province.

Nowhere is Musharraf's alliance with the United States more unpopular than in the Pashtun tribal belt straddling the Pakistan-Afghan border.

The tribesmen in Khar showed their loyalty with shouts of "Long Live Osama" and "Long Live Mullah Omar."

"Our jihad will continue and God willing, people will go to Afghanistan to oust American and British forces," Maulana Faqir Mohammad, a pro-Taliban cleric, told the crowd of turbaned tribals, many carrying Kalashnikovs and wearing bandoliers, and a few shouldering rocket launchers.

A mountainous region that is difficult to access, Bajaur lies across from the eastern Afghan province of Kunar, where U.S. troops are hunting al Qaeda and Taliban militants.

In contrast to Waziristan, the army has so far not put troops on the ground in Bajaur, though they man border posts there.

Islamist politicians said the attack on the school was really carried out by a U.S. Predator drone aircraft, but Pakistan's military spokesman and a U.S. spokesman in Kabul denied it.

"The entire operation was carried out by our forces. All resources including intelligence was our own," Major-General Shaukat Sultan said, though officials said the intelligence came from various sources.