By Xinhua
Islamabad : Pakistan’s Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz Khan Friday said the government had no confirmation of reports that a top Al Qaeda operative had been killed in the northwest of the country, the official Associated Press of Pakistan reported.
Talking to reporters at the National Database Registration Authority headquarters here, Nawaz said the militants had cleared the site after a missile hit the area in Mir Ali in north Waziristan before security personnel reached there.
“We cannot confirm Al Libi’s death because the militants had removed bodies from the site where the explosion happened and the security personnel did not find any corpse,” he said.
Media reports said that Abu Laith Al Libi, a senior Al Qaeda commander, had been killed in a missile attack in Mir Ali of North Waziristan bordering Afghanistan late Monday.
Al Libi was named in Al Qaeda videos as a senior field commander in Afghanistan, who was suspected of involvement in a suicide bombing attack that killed 23 people outside Bagram air base near Kabul during a visit by US Vice President Dick Cheney in February 2007.