Al Qaeda commander Ilyas Kashmiri is alive: Dawn

[1]

Mohammad Ilyas Kashmiri, the Al Qaeda commander who was believed to have been killed last month in a US drone attack in Pakistan, is alive, a media report said on Saturday.

Kashmiri is still active in the border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, Dawn said on its website quoting unnamed sources.

Media reports had earlier said that Kashmiri was killed in a US drone attack in Pakistan's South Waziristan tribal region.

The US and the Pakistani government however could not confirm his death.

Anti-terrorism experts describe Kashmiri as one of Al Qaeda's main commanders. He was held responsible for a number of attacks in Pakistan, including the May 22 attack on a navy airbase in Karachi and the 2009 attack on the army headquarters in Rawalpindi.

The US believe that Kashmiri, who is also a member of the terror group Harkat-ul Jihad al Islami (HuJI), was behind the March 2006 suicide bombing of the US consulate in Karachi that killed four people and wounded 48 others.

The US State Department designated him as a 'global terrorist'.