Ilyas Kashmiri was killed on Sept 14 while Nazimuddin Zalalov was killed last week, said US intelligence sources.—File

WASHINGTON: Two prominent terrorist leaders were killed in recent drone attacks, US intelligence sources told reporters in Washington on Wednesday.

The sources said that their deaths further established the effectiveness of the US unmanned aircraft that also killed Baitullah Mehsud last month.

Both terrorist leaders — Nazimuddin Zalalov alias Yahyo and Ilyas Kashmiri — were killed within this month. Both were on a US list of most wanted terrorists.

Yahyo was a prominent leader of the Islamic Jihad of Uzbekistan and a close lieutenant of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Ilyas Kashmiri was the chief of Harkatul Jihad Islami, a Kashmiri militant group associated with Al Qaeda.

Kashmiri was among the four suspected terrorists who were killed in a Sept 14 drone attack while Yahyo was killed last week. Such strikes are launched regularly on Pakistan’s mountainous tribal region bordering Afghanistan, a stronghold of the Taliban.
 
The US Department of Homeland Security identifies IMU as a group which introduced suicide bombing to South Asia.

Established in Uzbekistan to topple the present government, the group soon moved to Afghanistan and after the fall of the Taliban government it settled in Fata. Its behaviour in some areas also brought the group into conflict with the local tribesmen and the Pakistani military.

However, many IMU fighters have successfully integrated into the local community.

The IMU has close ties with Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Senior IMU leaders have held positions in the Al Qaeda hierarchy.

IMU chief Tahir Yuldashev has urged his followers to support the Pakistani Taliban in its conflict with Pakistani security forces. Pakistan claims to have killed at least 150 Uzbek militants in 2007.

The US Homeland Security describes Ilyas Kashmiri as a terrorist leader of ‘medium’ threat but closely associated with Al Qaeda.

In January 2004, Kashmiri, the then Muzaffarabad-based chief of Harkatul Jihad Islami, was arrested for suspected links with suicide attackers who rammed their vehicles into former President Pervez Musharraf’s convoy on Dec 25, 2003. He was released after one-month detention.