MESSAGE
| DATE | 2005-08-19 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] Good News from the Middle East
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Middle East
August 19, 2005
Al-Qaeda chief killed in police gunfight
By Michael Theodoulou
THE leader of al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia was killed in a gun battle with
police in the holy city of Medina hours before a visit by King Abdullah,
the newly installed monarch.
Saleh al-Awfi, who once stored the decapitated head of an American
hostage in his family fridge, was one of the most wanted men in Saudi
Arabia. His death, confirmed in a statement by the Saudi Interior
Ministry read on state television, means that only one terrorist from a
list of twenty-six most-wanted men issued by the authorities in
December, 2003, is still at large. The rest have been killed or
captured.
Al-Awfi, a former used-car dealer and prison guard, was in hiding in a
residential area near the venerated Mosque of the Prophet, the site of
the tomb of Muhammad, which King Abdullah visited for prayers.
He was one of two members of the “deviant group” — official terminology
for al-Qaeda — killed when security forces returned fire as they tracked
the terrorists in Medina, the ministry said.
Security forces also killed two other militants and arrested at least
ten others in raids in the capital, Riyadh, and in Medina, the statement
added.
In a letter posted on the internet this year, al-Awfi vowed to send a
steady stream of fighters into Iraq to join insurgents fighting US
forces there.
There were reports in April that he had died in a gunfight along with a
dozen other al-Qaeda militants. Among those confirmed dead at the time
was Abdulkarim al-Mejjati, a Moroccan terrorist who, it is believed, had
links to some of those involved in last month’s London bombings.
Al-Awfi’s death would be a further blow to militants loyal to Osama bin
Laden, the Saudi-born leader of al-Qaeda. Their network in the kingdom
has been weakened by a determined security crackdown by the authorities
in the past two years.
Analysts believe that the accession of King Abdullah — a pious figure
popular with his conservative Muslim subjects, who assumed the throne
after King Fahd, his half-brother, died this month — could increase
public support for the battle against al-Qaeda.
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