President Pervez Musharraf says it has been confirmed that al Qaeda's number three man, the operational leader, was killed in an explosion. There are conflicting reports as to what caused the blast. A Pakistani government official said it happened while Hamza Rabia (No. 3) and others were making a bomb, but a Pakistani newspaper said the militants were killed in a missile attack.
In any event, it appears that Rabia will no longer be staging terrorist attacks and planning the murders of innocents.
Pakistani tribesmen are seen on Thursday displaying a piece of a U.S. made laser guided missile, found in the debris of a house which was destroyed after alleged American Predator aircraft, which flew from bordering Afghanistan, fired on the house, killing five people including a senior al-Qaida commander identified as Abu Hamza Rabia.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- The operational commander of al-Qaida and possibly the No. 3 official in the terrorist organization, Hamza Rabia, was killed early Thursday morning by a CIA missile attack on a safehouse in Pakistan, officials told NBC News.
Pakistan's president later confirmed the militant leader's death.
"Yes indeed, 200 percent. I think he was killed the day before yesterday if I’m not wrong," President Pervez Musharraf told reporters as he arrived in Kuwait on an official visit on Saturday.
While Pakistani officials publicly said Rabia died in a blast caused by explosives stored in a house for bomb-making, officials speaking on condition of anonymity told NBC News he was killed by a CIA missile strike carried out by an unmanned Predator airplane.
Pakistan's government has always been reticent to admit that Predators are used in Pakistani airspace to hunt down al-Qaida operatives.
The sources told NBC News Rabia was one of five men killed at a safehouse located in the village of Asorai, in western Pakistan, near the town of Mirali.
Among those killed in the attack were two Pakistanis and three Arabs. The attacks were reportedly carried out between 1:45 a.m. and 2 a.m. local time on Thursday.
Local residents said that the men were killed by an unknown number of missiles fired by an unmanned Predator aircraft. The witnesses said that missile remnants bearing U.S. markings remain in the area. They also said they had heard six explosions, but it is uncertain how many of these were the result of missile attacks and how many may have been the result of the missiles detonating explosives inside the safehouse.
The U.S. government confirmed that a missile attack took place, but would not confirm that Rabia was killed.
This NBC News report then goes on to discuss how Rabia moved up in the ranks of al Qaeda. It also relays:
Rabia was the target of another Predator attack on Nov. 5, according to local Pakistani officials. During that strike, in the village of Mosaki, eight people were killed in what is now described as an unsuccessful attempt to kill Rabia. Local officials have told NBC News that the dead included the wife and children of the al-Qaida leader.
If true, it is tragic that Rabia chose the "profession" he did, putting his wife and children at risk. While I mourn the loss of innocent life, if an attempt to kill Rabia took out his loved ones a month ago, then he got a taste of his own medicine before he was killed. He had a few weeks to know the pain of the ramifications of what he spent his life doing -- plotting to INTENTIONALLY kill innocent women and children.
It should be noted that the United States military DOES NOT engage in such tactics. Intention matters greatly.
Again, it is absolutely tragic that an attempt to get at Rabia may have caused the deaths of his wife and children. I am in no way saying they deserved that fate. Unless they too were acting as al Qaeda operatives, they most definitely did not.
I am merely pointing out that if the information from the local officials is true, then Rabia personally experienced the agony he had been serving up. Obviously, that didn't cause him to do any soul-searching and reconsider his life's work.
Why does NBC tack on this story of the possible loss of Rabia's family members?
It appears to be an attempt to garner sympathy for "freedom fighter" Rabia or to take a shot at the U.S. government. In other words, it's NBC's SOP.
Whether Rabia died in an attack or by some other means is not the only aspect of this story being disputed. Interestingly, although Pakistani President Musharraf is "200 percent" certain that Rabia is dead, al Qaeda is denying the report.
According to Al Jazeera, NBC's sister network in the Middle East, an Arab TV channel insists that Rabia is alive.
Dubai-based satellite TV channel Al-Arabiya said on Saturday that it had been contacted by a person claiming to be from al-Qaida who denied that Rabia had been killed.
"An official from the al-Qaida group has denied, in a telephone conversation with the Al-Arabiya channel, that Hamza Rabia has been killed," a presenter on the channel told viewers.
The Al-Arabiya presenter cited the caller as saying that five people were killed in an explosion in the tribal region but these were two local men, two Tadjiks and an Arab called Suleiman al-Moghrabi.
Whom are you going to believe?
I know what I want to believe.
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