More in our continuing series documenting the mysterious “al Qaeda guys” whose existence in Afghanistan is doubted by blogger Michael Yon; this time courtesy of the Afghan Ministry of the Interior:
Fifteen Taliban militants including 13 foreign fighters were killed in Afghanistan’s eastern Paktika province as explosive devices went off prematurely, a statement issued by Afghan Interior Ministry said Sunday.
“Fifteen militants including eight Arabs, five Pakistanis and two Afghans were busy in making mines inside a mosque in Yousuf Khil district of Paktika on Friday but suddenly the explosive device exploded inside the mosque killing all the 15 rebels,” the statement added.
In addition, the US recently killed the top al Qaeda guy for Afghanistan, in a Predator airstrike in Pakistan’s Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan. On May 21, the US killed Mustafa Abu Yazid, one of al Qaeda’s top leaders, and the most senior al Qaeda leader to have been killed in the US air campaign in Pakistan to date.
Yazid served as the leader of al Qaeda in Afghanistan and the wider Khorasan, and more importantly, as al Qaeda’s top financier, which put him in charge of the terror group’s purse strings. He served on al Qaeda’s Shura Majlis, or top decision-making council. Yazid also was closely allied with the Taliban and advocated the program of embedding small al Qaeda teams with Taliban forces in Afghanistan.
Also recently, a bunch of al Qaeda guys who fight in Afghanistan were killed in a pair of Predator airstrikes in North Waziristan. The first strike, on June 10, killed two low-level Arab al Qaeda military commanders and a Turkish foreign fighter. Sheikh Ihsanullah was an “Arab al Qaeda military commander”; Ibrahim was the commander of the Fursan-i-Mohammed Group. The second strike, on June 19, killed an al Qaeda commander named Abu Ahmed, 11 members of the Islamic Jihad Group, and four Taliban fighters.
For more information on other al Qaeda guys killed in Afghanistan, see:
“Yet another ‘al Qaeda guy’ killed in Afghanistan”
“Another ‘al Qaeda guy’ dies in Afghanistan”
“Are there ‘al Qaeda guys’ in Afghanistan?”
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1 Comment
Turkish Jihadi groups reports at least 3-4 fighters killed in Paktika province…maybe part of the “al Qaeda” group killed in accidental bomb-making explosion?