Death
On January 31, 2008, Abu Laith al-Libi was reported to have been killed by a targeted killing drone attack from an unmanned CIA Predator drone, either late Monday, January 28, or early Tuesday, January 29, 2008. CNN attributed reports of his death to a "knowledgeable western official", and an "unnamed military source".
MSNBC reported that some intelligence sources describe him as the number three leader of al Qaeda.
On January 31, 2008 it was reported by the SITE Intelligence Group that he had been killed after a message appeared on Ekhlaas.org, an Islamist website.
" was martyred with a group of his brothers in the land of Muslim Pakistan ... Though we are sad for his loss, he left a legacy that will inflame the enemy nation and religion."
— Ekhlaas.org,
Other members of al Qaeda's cadre of leaders have been reported to have been killed by the airstrike that killed al Libi.
The Italian news source Adnkronos reported three other al Qaeda leaders were killed. They were Abu Obeida Tawari al-Obeidi, Abu Adel al-Kuwaiti and Abdel Ghaffar al-Darnawi.
The Kuwaiti news source Arab Times also reported Abu Adel al-Kuwaiti was killed in the airstrike, but it asserted he was a Saudi, in spite of his name. It reported the death in the airstrike of a second Saudi, named Tawari Rakhis Al-Mutairi, who had also lived in Kuwait for a long period of time.
Michael McConnell, the USA's Director of National Intelligence, told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee
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- “The death last week of Abu Layth al-Libi, al Qaeda's charismatic senior military commander and a key link between al Qaeda and its affiliates in North Africa, is the most serious blow to the group’s top leadership since the December 2005 death of then-external operations chief Hamza Rabia.”
Read more about this topic: Abu Laith Al-Libi
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth—
Assorted characters of death and blight”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“If it be aught toward the general good,
Set honor in one eye, and death i’th’ other,
And I will look on both indifferently;
For let the gods so speed me as I love
The name of honor more than I fear death.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“There are confessable agonies, sufferings of which one can positively be proud. Of bereavement, of parting, of the sense of sin and the fear of death the poets have eloquently spoken. They command the world’s sympathy. But there are also discreditable anguishes, no less excruciating than the others, but of which the sufferer dare not, cannot speak. The anguish of thwarted desire, for example.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)