Al Qaeda Chief Of Operations In Pakistan Is Dead
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Pakistan’s Waziristan region (courtesy Creative Commons)
The officials told ABC that al-Shahri "played a key operational and administrative role for the group.”
Al-Shahri was in charge of anti-U.S. operations in the region and coordinated attacks with the Pakistani Taliban, according to The Daily Beast. His death comes less than a month after Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, al Qaeda’s second –in-command was also killed in Pakistan.
Al-Shahri may have been a contender to assume duties of al-Rahman, according to the BBC.
Eight of al Qaeda’s top 20 leaders were killed this year, the Pentagon’s undersecretary for defense intelligence, Michael Vikers, told the Associated Press. He said “"within 18-24 months, core al-Qaeda's cohesion and operational capabilities could be degraded to the point that the group could fragment and exist mostly as a propaganda arm."
Officials have not yet said how al-Shahri was killed. Three militant were reportedly killed in a drone attack on the tenth anniversary of Sept. 11, though, and it is possible al-Shahri was one of them, the Associated Press reports.
Despite the success of recent anti-al Qaeda operations, Vickers and CIA director David Petraeus said al Qaeda offshoots will still be a serious threat to the U.S.
Reach associate news editor Hannah Madans here.
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Comments
I put these predictions in with this 'smart diplomacy', when people start calling themselves smart and blowing their own horn you know you are in big trouble. Look at it this way if I was to blame for all this they would shoot me.
They have plenty of opportunities to rebirth themselves via the Arab Spring, so just as you make gains, they make gains so it goes on. All the fighters released from the prisons clearly have negated the targeted killing program, they have new sources of weapons, new AO's such as Egypt and the Sinai. I think it is too early to predicting such rosy outcomes about al-Qaida, these mistakes have created a long term geopolitical mess. It is a disaster, how big we do not know yet, but it looks to be really big.