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U.S. Strike On Al Qaeda Top Deputy Said to Fail
U.S. and Pakistani authorities have said they have come close to killing Zawahiri in the past. In early 2004, Pakistani security forces believed they had him surrounded in the tribal areas, only to discover he had slipped away. On Saturday, al-Arabiya television reported that Zawahiri was alive, citing a source it said had been in contact with al Qaeda. "Reports of his death are wishful thinking," the network quoted unnamed sources as saying.
Residents of the largely autonomous tribal areas have frequently resisted efforts to capture or kill al Qaeda fugitives and have denounced the Bush and Musharraf administrations over attacks in the region. Friday's missile strike seemed to have fanned such sentiment.
  Pakistani tribesmen march to protest the U.S. airstrike in Damadola, northwest of Islamabad, that targeted al Qaeda's deputy leader, Egyptian-born Ayman Zawahiri. Government officials conceded foreigners may have been in the area. (By Ali Imam -- Reuters) |
"We want a swift government response to this aggression," said Zarwali Rahbar, a tribal elder who spoke at the rally near Damadola. "General Musharraf should protect us and not the U.S. interests in Pakistan."
U.S. military sources said Pakistan's intelligence service had been heavily involved in the attack. Senior Pakistani officials would not confirm involvement in the strike but acknowledged regular intelligence cooperation with the United States.
"The intelligence sharing is on an almost daily basis," said a senior Pakistani intelligence official, who said the cooperation included sharing of both human and electronic intelligence sources.
Late Saturday, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it had lodged a formal protest over the incident with the United States, but it left open the possibility that outsiders were operating in the vicinity of the strike.
"According to preliminary investigations, there was foreign presence in the area and that in all probability was targeted from across the border in Afghanistan," the statement said. "The investigations are still continuing. Meanwhile the Foreign Office has lodged a protest with the U.S. ambassador in Islamabad."
In Washington, the State Department said it had not received a formal protest.
A protest by Pakistan would be its second in less than a week, the first having come after a missile struck a village in the North Waziristan tribal region close to the Afghan border. That attack killed eight people, and local officials said terrorist suspects were not among them.
In December, a senior al Qaeda leader, Hamza Rabia, was believed to have been killed in a CIA-led strike in Pakistan along the Afghan border.
Musharraf did not address the attack directly Saturday. But while speaking at a public rally in the town of Sawabi, a hotbed of Islamic radicalism in North-West Frontier province, he asked people not to let suspected militants hide in their neighborhoods. "The consequences will be severe," he said.
Human rights organizations in Pakistan were vocal in condemning the attack, which they said undermined the cause of democracy in a country whose president came to power in a military coup in 1999.
"When the U.S. and other Western powers commit such a gross violation of human rights, it further weakens our position to highlight the human rights violations of Pakistan's military ruler in the world," said Afrasiab Khattak, director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
Khan reported from Karachi, Pakistan. Staff writers Dafna Linzer and Glenn Kessler in Washington contributed to this report.
