Egyptian Al-Qaeda militant killed in Pakistan strike: official

A wanted Egyptian Al-Qaeda operative who has appeared in some of the terror network's videos was killed in a suspected US missile strike in Pakistan, a security official said Saturday. Abu Jihad al-Masri was among several rebels killed when two missiles fired by a spy drone hit a truck in the North Waziristan tribal region bordering Afghanistan on Friday night, the senior official said. The United States has offered a one million dollar reward for the death or capture of Al-Masri, according to the Rewards for Justice website run by the US State Department. In 2006, he appeared in a video introduced by his fellow countryman Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's deputy, in which he said that his own Islamic group, Al-Jamaa Al-Islamiya, had joined forces with Al-Qaeda. The video was released by As Sahab, Al-Qaeda's media arm. His death came in one of two separate missile attacks in Pakistan's tribal belt on Friday, the latest in series of attacks that have raised tensions between Washington and Islamabad. The attacks also come just days before the US presidential election, in which the "war on terror" in Afghanistan and, increasingly, Pakistan has been a key foreign policy issue.

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