By IANS,
Peshawar : Former Pakistani Army commando Ilyas Kashmiri, cited as one of the masterminds of a plot for a series of ‘Mumbai-style’ attacks in European cities and who forged close links with the Al Qaeda, has been killed in a US drone attack, a media report said Saturday.
Kashmiri was killed in a drone strike in South Waziristan, Dawn.com quoted BBC Urdu service report as saying.
Kashmiri was the chief of the Harkatul Jihad al-Islami (HuJI).
Considered one of the most dangerous terror leaders in the world, he headed “Brigade 313” that is believed to have masterminded the May 22 attack on a naval base in Karachi.
Heavily armed terrorists stormed PNS Mehran base in Karachi and destroyed two surveillance aircraft. The 16-hour long siege left 10 security personnel and four terrorists dead.
The media report said that Kashmiri was killed Saturday in the drone strike that left at least nine other militants dead.
An official told BBC Urdu service that he had received information about Kashmiri’s death but could not confirm it.
Witnesses were quoted as saying that Kashmiri had arrived in South Waziristan from the Khyber tribal region.
The news of Kashmiri’s killing comes just a month after Osama bin Laden was gunned down May 2 by US commandos who stormed the Al Qaeda leader’s high-walled hideout in Abbottabad city, barely 120 km from Islamabad.
Pakistani Taliban and Al Qaeda have vowed to avenge Osama’s death. There have been a string of terror strikes across Pakistan since his killing.
The bushy bearded Kashmiri, who is also named in the Mumbai terror attack case against Pakistani Canadian accused Tahawwur Hussain Rana, was described by one senior US official as a rising star in Al Qaeda terror group, NBC News had reported.
Rana, who is accused of providing material support to Pakistan based terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and providing a cover to Pakistani-American David Coleman Headley for scouting targets for the 2008 Mumbai terror attack, has gone on trial in Chicago.
Although the attacks on European cities never came off, Kashmiri, who frequently sported aviator-styled dark glasses, had told a reporter for the Asian Times that the 2008 Mumbai attack was “nothing compared to what has already been planned for the future”.
Kashmiri was at one point a member of the Pakistani military, serving as a commando in a Special Services Group that was once tasked with training Afghan mujahideen to fight the Soviets.
He was later reassigned to train Kashmiri fighters against the Indians, but broke from the Pakistani Army and joined a terrorist group called Harakat-ul Jihad-i-Islami, or HuJI.
According to the Chicago case indictment, Kashmiri based his terror operations in western Pakistan, and starting in 2007 was “in regular contact with Al Qaeda”.
In February 2009, the indictment states, Headley met Kashmiri and another co-defendant in the Waziristan region of Pakistan and handed him surveillance videotapes he had taken of the Copenhagen offices of Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten that had run cartoons on Prophet Muhammad, to help plan a terrorist operation.
“During the meeting, Kashmiri indicated that he had already reviewed the Copenhagen videotapes and suggested that they consider using a truck bomb in the operation,” the indictment states.
“Kashmiri also indicated he could provide manpower for the operation.”