Rumor: 4th Ranking Al Qaeda Leader Killed In U.S. Missile Strike On Thursday In Pakistan

Pakistani and U.S. officials haven't confirmed this but it does seem to have some pretty strong arguments...that an Egyptian, Khalid Habib, was killed in Thursday's missile strike by a U.S. predator drone that hit in Pakistan's village of Taparghai and that Habib is currently considered the 4th in command of al Qaeda leadership.

Here's some of the details from the story at the NYT:

A missile attack from a remotely piloted American aircraft is believed to have killed a senior member of Al Qaeda in South Waziristan on Thursday, a former member of a militant group in the region said in an interview.
The operative, Khalid Habib, an Egyptian who was chief of operations in Pakistan’s tribal region, is described by the Central Intelligence Agency as the fourth-ranking person in the Qaeda hierarchy.
The attack, on the village of Taparghai, killed four people, some of them Arabs, according to initial reports on Thursday.

Mr. Habib had relocated to Taparghai expressly to avoid missile strikes, the former militant said. The area around Taparghai is near Makin, a base of Baitullah Mehsud, the chief of the Pakistani Taliban.
Mr. Habib was in a parked Toyota station wagon, a favored vehicle of the militants in the tribal area, when he was hit by the missile, the former member of the militant group said.
A resident of the village said in a telephone interview that the man killed in the attack seemed to be “important.” He was known in the village as Zalfay, the resident said. The name means “long hair” in Pashto, the language spoken in the area.

You gotta love that - "Habib had relocated to Taparghai expressly to avoid missile strikes" ....hahahaha! That brings up two excellent points: 1. The U.S. missile strikes are certainly disrupting al Qaeda and Taliban leadership behavior and 2. That same leadership is being tracked...hunted, if you will...over long stretches of area.

Hopefully, this news is 100% accurate and the world can be rid of scum lik Habib but even if it isn't confirmed, we can see that being a leader if Pakistan certainly isn't a cake walk like it was even six months ago.

My hope is that at some point in time, the Taliban and al Qaeda in Pakistan will decide that it is actually safer for them to be in the wide areas of Afghanistan and they will return there. And that is when the U.S. and NATO can unleash the heavy bombardment strategy that we used in Tora Bora.

U.S. Strike Is Said to Kill Qaeda Figure in Pakistan

Mr. Habib was in a parked Toyota station wagon, a favored vehicle of the militants in the tribal area, when he was hit by the missile, the former member of the militant group said.
A resident of the village said in a telephone interview that the man killed in the attack seemed to be “important.” He was known in the village as Zalfay, the resident said. The name means “long hair” in Pashto, the language spoken in the area.
The number of American missile strikes aimed at Qaeda operatives in North Waziristan and South Waziristan has risen sharply in the last six weeks — there have been 11 since early September, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
The Bush administration is trying to stop the militants from crossing the border and carrying out raids against American soldiers in southern Afghanistan. Officials in Washington have also said they are concerned that Taliban and Qaeda operatives are plotting new attacks against the United States and Europe from their sanctuaries in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
The missile strikes are conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency but are for the most part coordinated with Pakistan’s government, according to American officials. But that cooperation does not extend to ground operations.
In September, a raid by American Special Forces in South Waziristan against what the Americans said were Qaeda forces set off a storm of protest. After that raid, Pakistan’s military threatened to resist any such incursions by force.
There have been few protests by people in the tribal region against the airstrikes, apparently because those killed have mostly been Arab and Uzbek members of Al Qaeda, not Pakistanis.
It had been nearly two years since the last missile attack in the area where Mr. Habib was killed. That attack, on Jan. 16, 2007, killed about 10 militants, most of them Arabs, in a Qaeda training camp in Zamazola. Mr. Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban chief, vowed to avenge the death by directing a number of suicide bomb attacks against Pakistani military installations.