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Osama bin Laden and several other Al Qaeda leaders may have been killed during an American missile raid in Afghanistan last week, media reports said.
US television networks quoting unnamed officials said on Wednesday that the missile, fired from an unmanned drone on Monday, hit a cave complex in southeastern Afghanistan where senior Al Qaeda leaders, including bin Laden, were believed to have been hiding.
The R-Q Hellfire anti-tank missile was fired after the drone, a Predator, operated by the Central Intelligence Agency spied a convoy of vehicles with armed guards and showed images of three robed men getting out of cars, the CBS News reported.
The missile hit the men and the "central figure had a close encounter of the worst kind with a Hellfire missile", it said quoting an official.
Bin Laden and his aides were hiding in the Zawar Khili cave complex after they fled Tora Bora under relentless US raids, the reports said.
But defence and intelligence officials have refused to confirm or deny the report.
Commander Frank Merrimen of the Central Command, however, said: "The Predator was not involved. I can tell it was not our operation."
A new agency reported from Kabul that Wazir Khan, a brother of regional warlord Bacha Khan, said seven people were killed in the attack. An unnamed US official, however, was quoted as saying that at least one person -- believed to have been a top Al Qaeda figure -- was killed.
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The Terrorism Weblog: Latest Stories from Around the World
External Link: For further coverage, please visit www.saja.org/roundupsept11.html
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