Ilyas Kashmiri killed in US drone attack: BBC report
Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist Ilyas Kashmiri, a key suspect in the Mumbai attacks, was among nine militants killed in a US drone strike, BBC reported today, quoting residents of South Waziristan tribal region.
The US drones targeted a location 20 km from Wana, one of the main towns in South Waziristan late last night.
A drone fired two missiles at the spot and two more missiles were fired after a short interval, local residents were quoted as saying by BBC Urdu.
The local residents said Kashmiri was among the nine militants killed in the drone strike.
Three others were injured in the attack.
A government official in Peshawar confirmed the drone strike to BBC but said there was no confirmation of Kashmiri's death.
Other officials said all the dead militants were Punjabi Taliban.
The report said Kashmiri came to Wana from the Khyber tribal region 10 days ago and moved to the area where the drone strike was carried out last night.
Asked by media persons in Multan about reports of Kashmiri's death in the drone strike, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said, "I do not have any information now."
Local residents said the dead militants had been buried in a graveyard in the area.
The US recently gave Pakistan time till July – the month when NATO and allied forces will begin withdrawing from Afghanistan – to launch a military offensive in North Waziristan tribal region and to capture five most wanted al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders, including Kashmiri.
The other terrorists on the US list are Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mullah Omar, Sirajuddin Haqqani and Atia Abdur Rehman.
Reports have said the US and Pakistan have formed joint intelligence teams to track down these terrorists.
Kashmiri, the head of the banned Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami, has been linked to several major terror attacks, including the 2008 Mumbai strikes and the recent Taliban raid on the PNS Mehran naval airbase in Karachi.
This is not the first that there have been reports of Kashmiri's death in a drone strike.
He was reported killed in an attack by a US spy plane in North Waziristan in September 2009 but re-emerged a month later to give an interview to Syed Saleem Shahzad, the journalist who was recently abducted and murdered.
A Madhya Pradesh anti-terrorist squad constable was shot dead and two other policemen injured when two suspected SIMI activists fired at them at the entrance of Ratlam railway station on Friday. The encounter took place when a police party led by Manish Dube was on the trail of one Zakir Hussain, an alleged SIMI activist, who was the prime suspect in the murder of ATS constable Sitaram Yadav in Khandwa on November 29, 2009.
When Zakir saw that the police party had almost cornered him, he opened fire with a country-made pistol, Ratlam .Constable Shivpratap Singh was critically injured while Dube and a constable were wounded in the attack. Singh succumbed to his injuries while being taken to Indore. the SIMI activist was also injured in the encounter.
Though Zakir and his accomplice managed to escape, both were eventually nabbed after police sealed the town’s borders. Zakir was wanted in connection with the murder of Yadav, who was shot dead along with two other persons by motorcycle-borne youth suspected to be SIMI activists. Yadav was part of a team that had nabbed SIMI activists from Indore a few days before the murder
Madhya Pradesh ATS constable killed by suspected SIMI 
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