Ilyas Kashmiri alive and active: Report

Al-Qaeda-linked militant commander Ilyas Kashmiri, reported to have been killed in a US drone attack in Pakistan’s tribal belt last month, is still alive, a media report said on Saturday.

Kashmiri, the chief of the Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami (HuJI), is still alive and active in the border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, Dawn News channel quoted sources as saying.

Security officials of the US and Pakistan had failed to confirm the death of Kashmiri, the sources said.

The dreaded commander, a key suspect in the 2008 Mumbai attacks and the alleged mastermind of the terror strike on a naval airbase in Karachi in May, was reported to have been killed in a US drone strike in South Waziristan on June 3.

 

Several questions have been raised on a statement purportedly issued by HuJI about Kashmiri’s death in the drone strike.

The said photograph of Kashmiri’s corpse issued by HuJI, was actually of a member of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) team that attacked Mumbai in November 2008.

Nearly two years ago, Kashmiri was reported to have been killed in another drone strike. However, that was debunked when the militant commander was interviewed by Syed Saleem Shahzad, the reporter who was recently abducted and killed in mysterious circumstances.

Anti-terrorism experts have described Kashmiri as one of al-Qaeda’s main operational commanders in Pakistan.