Like Christopher Robin in Winnie the Pooh, Ayman al-Zawahiri was busy, probably back soon, according to news reports today, and not killed in the UAV strikes yesterday.
"Al-Zawahri was not there at the time of the attack," the Pakistani official told Reuters.
Maybe the official could clue us in to where he actually is?
The airstrikes yesterday morning destroyed three houses in a near-Afghanistan Pakistani village, killing upwards of 30 people. Pakistan's information minister condemned the attack as thousands of locals protested the attacks.
Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed did not directly blame the U.S. for the attack, which killed at least 17 people, but he said the government wanted "to assure the people we will not allow such incidents to reoccur." (USA Today/AP)
Sure, he's got that power. He added:
"The US ambassador will be called to the foreign office." (Al Jazeera)
A Pakistani intelligence source said he had been told by US officials the strike was ordered based on information that al-Zawahiri and Mullah Mohammad Omar, the ousted Taliban leader, had been invited to a dinner to celebrate this week's Muslim Eid al-Adha festival. They had no confirmation, however, that either had been there at the time of the attack at about 3am on Friday (2200 GMT Thursday). Mullah Dadullah, a senior Taliban commander, said no Taliban commander had been at the dinner. (Al Jazeera)
"I know all the 18 people killed. There was neither al Zawahri nor any other Arab among them. Rather they were all poor people of the area," Haroon Rashid, the area's National Assembly representative, was quoted as saying by the Afghan Islamic Press, a news agency based in the Pakistani border city of Peshawar. (Reuters)
"This is a big lie. ... Only our family members died in the attack," said Shah Zaman, who lost two sons and a daughter. "They dropped bombs from planes, and we were in no position to stop them, to tell them we are innocent." (AP)
President Musharraf made vague references to some incident and the Pakistani people continue to show their displeasure with the official government's attitude of putting a blurry filter on America's action in the FATA area. Not that the Pakistani military has any more control of the area to speak of, either.
President Pervez Musharraf, addressing local government officials in Swabi, a town to the north of Islamabad, made an oblique reference to the attack.
"There was an incident in Bajaur. We are looking into it, who did it -- people from outside have come," he said, without pointing a finger directly at the United States.
A military spokesman at U.S. Central Command in Florida said there had been no official report of an attack in Pakistan.
Anger has been building in Pakistan over repeated U.S. intrusions, and on Saturday hundreds of protesters chanted anti-American slogans at Inayat Killi [sic Inayat Qala] village, near Damadola. (Reuters)
Villagers in Damadola denied hosting al-Zawahri or any other al-Qaeda or Taliban figure, saying all the dead were local people. On Saturday, more than 8,000 tribesmen staged a peaceful protest in a nearby town to condemn the airstrike. (USA Today/AP)
"Americans have killed innocent women and children and now they are diverting attention of the world from this cruel act through the baseless claim that al-Qaeda leaders were targeted," Sahibzada Haroon ur Rashid, a lawmaker from the hard-line Jamaat-e-Islami party told the protest rally.
"This is in fact real terrorism to target innocent people, the children and the women," Haroon said. He rejected the U.S. TV reports that Ayman al-Zawahiri or any foreigner was in the area.
"Hundreds of people took part to pull dead bodies out of the rubble soon after the air strike and the people did not see any foreigner killed in the attack," the lawmaker told the huge rally. He said that the issue of the attack would also be raised inthe parliament and that he had sent a motion to the National Assembly, of which he is a member.
Sahibzada Haroon ur Rashid said all the victims of the attack were local people and condemned it as "open terrorism".
"The people will continue peaceful protests against such attacks," said Rashid.
"The people also condemn President General Pervez Musharraf's policies, which have led to such incidents. We want the (Pakistan) government to avoid pleasing the Americans." (AP)
Musharraf continues to be in a rough spot with his outlier constituents who're the real problem. The people in the cities, modern as they are, are quite happy to ignore that the UAVs fire into what's considered redneck territory. The anti-Musharraf, pro-Islam leaning political groups (JI, above, for example) will continue to use events like this to claim that he's giving away Pakistani sovereignty and try to shake his rule. There've been reports that smaller gatherings have been violent.
The AP seems to be the root source of the report that Zawahiri wasn't there, with USA Today and The Age directly taking excerpts. Also, I've updated my Google Earth placemark for this incident to include the town of Inayat Qala.