Officials and al Qaeda leaders Sunday confirmed the deaths of two of the terrorist group's leaders, including a man thought to be al Qaeda's car-bombing expert, in US drone strikes since the start of the year. It was the first verification of the deaths of Qari Imran, who was key to the group's car bombing efforts, and Ahmed Farooq, a leader in the group's India cell.
Imran was killed when an unmanned aircraft targeted a compound in North Waziristan tribal region on January 5, a spokesman for al Qaeda's India branch, Usama Mahmood, said.
Imran was a member of a highly trained cell within al Qaeda tasked with carrying out car bombings in Pakistan and Afghanistan, an intelligence official told dpa, seeking anonymity. The cell was behind the September 2008 bombing of a Marriott Hotel in the Islamabad, which left several people including Americans, dead, the official said.
Ahmed Farooq, another leader of al Qaeda's newly created India cell, was killed in a separate drone attack weeks later, Mahmood said.
Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri announced the creation of al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent last year.
The decision apparently came in response to the growing influence in the region of the Islamic State militant group, which controls large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq.
Both the militants were responsible for the group's Afghan affairs at the time of their deaths, he added.
Meanwhile, a drone strike on Sunday killed four suspected Islamists militants in the Shawal area of the North Waziristan tribal region near the Afghan border, two intelligence officials told dpa.
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