Nato 'kills top Afghan militant'

30 June 2011 Last updated at 13:56 GMT Smoke billows from the Intercontinental Hotel after the Tuesday night attack Nato forces in Afghanistan say they have killed a senior militant they suspect of involvement in the attack on the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul.

Ismail Jan died in an air strike in the eastern province of Paktia on Wednesday, the alliance said.

BBC correspondents say he is a leading commander in the Haqqani network, which is linked to the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Nato and Afghan intelligence believe Haqqani members helped mount the hotel attack, which left 22 people dead.

The Interior Ministry says nine attackers were killed as well as 11 civilians and two police.

There has so far been no independent confirmation of Ismail Jan's death.

'Precision air strike'

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the hotel attack, but Nato said it was carried out jointly with the Haqqani network.

The group has bases in the tribal region of Waziristan in Pakistan, but focuses its attacks over the border in Afghanistan.

It has been accused of carrying out a number of high-profile gun and bomb attacks in Afghanistan in recent years.

Afghan officials also say the network has close ties to Pakistani intelligence services.

A statement from the Nato-led Isaf force said Jan was suspected of providing "material support" to the hotel attackers in Kabul.

It said he had been killed in what it called a "precision air strike" in Gardez district.

"Ismail Jan was the deputy to the senior Haqqani commander inside Afghanistan, Haji Mali Khan. Jan and several Haqqani fighters were killed in the strike," the statement said.

It added that he had been tracked down after information from Afghan officials, citizens and "disenfranchised insurgents".

Ismail Jan operated in and around the Khost-Gardez pass, a rugged and heavily forested area near the Pakistan border, and was blamed for leading attacks on Nato and Afghan targets.

Securing the porous and volatile border between Pakistan and Afghanistan has presented a major challenge for security forces in both countries.

On Thursday General Aminullah Amarkhel, the border police commander for eastern Afghanistan, resigned. He said Kabul and Nato had failed to act after Pakistani rockets were fired into Afghan territory.

Last week Afghan officials accused the Pakistani army of firing hundreds of rockets over the border. Pakistan denies this but says a few stray rockets may have crossed the border as the army battled militants in the area.

The army says that in recent weeks insurgents have crossed over from Afghanistan and attacked villages in Pakistan's tribal areas.

Many of the militant groups along the frontier are closely linked.

'Lapses'

In Kabul, meanwhile, the BBC has seen photos showing at least two of the Intercontinental attackers wearing police uniforms, raising questions about whether the militants received inside help.

In other photos large amounts of rocket-propelled grenades, heavy machine guns and bullets were left behind by the dead insurgents. Investigators want to know how they got their weapons inside the hotel.

Previous attacks in Kabul and elsewhere have led intelligence officials to conclude that the Haqqani network has penetrated Afghan security at the highest level.

The BBC's Bilal Sarwary in Kabul says several police officials are now being questioned over what many see as glaring security lapses at one of the capital's apparently most secure locations.

Afghan forces are also accused of being slow to arrive on the scene once Tuesday night's attack had started.

Nato air support had to be called in before calm was finally restored.

Correspondents say the Intercontinental, which is not part of the international hotel chain of the same name, is one of Kabul's most heavily guarded hotels.

But a security ministry official told the BBC that the militants could have exploited a loophole in security caused by renovation work.

Kabul - the scene of many attacks over recent years - has been relatively stable so far this year, although violence has increased across the country since the killing of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan on 2 May, and the start of the Taliban's "spring offensive".

In January 2008, militants stormed the capital's most popular luxury hotel, the Serena, and killed eight people, including an American, a Norwegian and a woman from the Philippines.

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US hails death of al-Qaeda militant

11 June 2011 Last updated at 18:43 GMT BBC's Will Ross says some people are sceptical at the news due to false reports of Fazul Abdullah Mohammed's death in the past.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said the death of top African al-Qaeda militant Fazul Abdullah Mohammed is a "significant blow" to the group.

He and another militant were killed earlier this week in a shootout with police at a checkpoint in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, officials said.

Mr Mohammed was the most wanted man in Africa, with a $5m bounty on his head.

He was suspected of having played a key role in the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa, which killed 224 people.

He was also accused of attacking Israeli targets on the Kenyan coast in 2002, and was recently believed to have been working with the Islamist militant group, al-Shabab, which controls much of southern Somalia.

'Victory for the world'

Mr Mohammed was shot dead by Somali Transitional Federal Government (TFG) forces in north-western Mogadishu overnight on Tuesday, Somali security officials said.

"Our forces fired on two men who refused to stop at a roadblock. They tried to defend themselves when they were surrounded by our men," TFG commander Abdikarim Yusuf told the AFP news agency.

"We took their ID documents, one of which was a foreign passport," he said, adding that medicine, mobile phones and laptops were also found.

Somali sources told AFP that Mr Mohammed was carrying $40,000 in cash and a South African passport bearing the name Daniel Robinson.

Continue reading the main story Born in Moroni, Comoros islands, in the Indian OceanIndicted in the US over 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and TanzaniaOne of FBI's most wanted terror suspects with $5m rewardSpeaks French, Swahili, Arabic, English and Comoran

Source: FBI

Gen Abdikarim Yusuf Dhagabadan, Somalia's army chief, said officials at first did not know who the dead man was.

"We buried him," he told the Associated Press. "But soon after checking his documents, [we] exhumed his body and took his pictures and DNA. Then we learned that he was the man wanted by the US authorities."

The general described the death as "similar to Osama bin Laden's", who was killed in a US commando raid on his home in northern Pakistan on 2 May.

"It is a victory for the world. It is a victory for Somali army," he added.

A senior US government official also told the BBC that it was a "very big deal" and commended the actions of the Transitional Federal Government.

"Fazul Abdullah Mohammed's death removes one of the terrorist group's most experienced operational planners in East Africa and has almost certainly set back operations," the official said.

After landing in Tanzania's capital, Dar es Salaam, on the second leg of a tour of Africa, Mrs Clinton told reporters: "[His] death is a significant blow to al-Qaeda, its extremist allies, and its operations in East Africa."

"It is a just end for a terrorist who brought so much death and pain to so many innocents in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam and elsewhere - Tanzanians, Kenyans, Somalis, and our own embassy personnel."

Born in the Comoros islands in the early 1970s, Mr Mohammed is believed to have joined al-Qaeda in Afghanistan during the 1990s.

After the bombings of the US embassies in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, and Dar es Salaam in 1998, the US authorities accused him of involvement and offered the $5m reward for information leading to his capture.

Hillary Clinton has arrived in Tanzania as part of a tour of Africa

In 2002, Mr Mohammed was reported to have been put in charge of al-Qaeda operations in East Africa.

That year, he was blamed for the bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel at the beach resort of Kikambala, Kenya, which left 13 people dead, and an attempt to shoot down an Israeli passenger aircraft in nearby Mombasa.

In 2007, he survived a US air strike on the southern Somali coastal village of Hayo, near the town of Ras Kamboni.

In recent years, Mr Mohammed is thought to have joined other foreign militants in Somalia fighting fought alongside al-Shabab, which declared allegiance to al-Qaeda in 2010. It said reports of his death were untrue.

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