Associated Press

Islamabad, May 14:

Pakistan today denied a media report that an unmanned CIA Predator aircraft had killed an Al Qaeda operative near Pakistan-Afghanistan border this week.

ABC News in the United States yesterday quoted intelligence sources as saying that senior Al Qaeda operative Haitham al-Yemeni was killed by a missile fired from an unmanned CIA Predator aircraft.

The CIA has declined to comment on the report. But Pakistan’s Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Amhed said that, “No such incident took place near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.”

Also today, a spokeswoman for the US military in Afghanistan, Lt Cindy Moore, said forces from the US-led coalition in Afghanistan were not involved in such an incident, but she couldn’t say whether it had taken place.

Pakistan which became a key ally of the US in its war on terror after the September

11, 2001, attacks in America, earlier this month arrested Abu Faraj al-libbi, reputed to be Al Qaeda’s No 3 leader.

ABC News reported that with the capture of al-Libbi, officials decided to strike at al-Yemeni rather than risk that he would go into hiding.