Pakistan: A Most-Wanted Terrorist Dead

Pakistani forces have killed an Egyptian al Qaeda terrorist wanted by the United States over the 1998 American Embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, a Cabinet minister said Thursday.

Mohsin Musa Matawalli Atwah, 45, was killed late Wednesday in a Pakistani military raid led by helicopter gunships, on a hideout in the remote North Waziristan village of Naghar Kalai, near the Afghan border, the minister said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

"I confirm the death of this Egyptian terrorist," the minister said without elaborating further.

Another senior Pakistani intelligence official said military reports from the field indicated that Atwah had been killed in the attack, in which at least six other militants were believed killed.

The official also declined to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the case.

The operation was launched late Wednesday in the remote North Waziristan village of Naghar Kalai after the Pakistani military received information that Atwah might have been hiding there, two senior counterterrorism officials said on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the issue.

"There was a huge explosion, which we think was a missile attack, before the helicopters came and bombed the house," said village tribal elder Khan Wazir, aged in his 50s. "When we came to the house there was dust and other people who were already trying to pull out bodies and sift through the rubble."

An intelligence official in Miran Shah, the main town in the volatile North Waziristan region that hugs the Afghan border, said Wednesday's raid killed nine people in all — seven militants, including five non-Pakistanis, as well as two young brothers who lived in the house, one aged 2 years and the other 2 months.

"This attack was launched on the basis of intelligence showing that he (Atwah) might be hiding there," one of the counterterrorism officials, based in the capital, Islamabad, told The Associated Press.

The bodies of the slain militants were taken by armed men following the attack and believed buried, officials said.

U.S. authorities had posted a $5 million bounty for Atwah, who is accused of involvement in the Aug. 7, 1998, bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya that killed 12 Americans and more than 200 Africans.

It was unclear when Atwah may have come to Pakistan, but there had been speculation that he had previously lived in Somalia under the protection of local warlords.

Neither U.S. nor Egyptian diplomats in Islamabad could confirm if Atwah was the target of the attack.

Wazir, the Naghar Kalai tribal leader, said the house that was attacked was situated next to an Islamic school and that numerous men from outside of the village, but wearing local Pashtun clothes and long beards, had been regularly staying at both buildings.

After the attack, a group of armed men surrounded the crumpled house to keep onlookers back before taking at least seven bodies away, Wazir said.

"We had information about the presence of foreign militants," said Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, the top Pakistan army spokesman. "It was a sting operation and the target was knocked out."

Sultan said al Qaeda members are moving in small groups and mixing with locals in North Waziristan, which has witnessed a spike in militant activity in recent months with almost daily attacks on Pakistani security forces based in the area.

"The people (behind the attacks) are certainly the al Qaeda people," Sultan told Associated Television Press News.

"They are the ones who are financing and they do have some local facilitators," Sultan said.

Pakistani security officials have previously said Osama bin Laden, his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri and other top al Qaeda figures could be hiding in the Pakistan-Afghan border region.

Some 80,000 Pakistani troops are deployed along the Afghan border in a bid to catch al Qaeda and Taliban militants.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S., Pakistan has arrested more than 750 al Qaeda suspects, including senior leaders of the terror network.