Al-Zawahri visited attacked Pakistani madrasa in past

KHAR, Pakistan, Oct 31 (Reuters) Al Qaeda Number Two Ayman al-Zawahri was a past visitor to a madrasa destroyed by a Pakistan Army helicopter attack, but he was not there when the missiles struck, senior Pakistani security officials said.

Several other al Qaeda luminaries had passed through the religious school run by pro-Taliban cleric Maulana Liaqatullah, who was killed in the airstrike along with around 80 of his followers yesterday, the officials told reporters a day after the attack.

Among the other known militants to have frequented the madrasa at Chenagai village, near the Afghan border in the Bajaur tribal region of northwest Pakistan, was Abu Obaida al-Misri.

An Egyptian, like Zawahri, al-Misri was identified as the mastermind of a plot to blow up US-bound airliners flying from London's Heathrow airport that was foiled earlier this year.

The officials say he was a mentor to Rashid Rauf, a British Muslim arrested in Pakistan in August, who was said to be a key figure in the conspiracy.

No major militant figure was believed to have been present when the army attacked, and orders for the assault were given in anticipation that the militants were about to be sent to fight -- possibly to launch suicide attacks on NATO and Afghan forces.

''The madrasa was under surveillance since July when the activity started picking up pace,'' said a senior official.

Last January, a CIA-operated Predator missile attack targeted Zawahri in Bajaur's Damadola village near the Afghan border.

Intelligence officials said a handful of al Qaeda operatives at a parley hosted by Liaqatullah were killed. But Zawahri was a no-show and reports that al-Misri was killed proved incorrect.

The Pakistan government had been trying to persuade militant tribesmen to agree peace terms along the lines of accords brokered earlier in the two most restive tribal regions -- North and South Waziristan.

But officials said Liaqatullah and his comrade Maulana Faqir Mohammad, who rallied fighters at the site of the destroyed madrasa immediately after the attack, ignored all warnings.

The officials showed reporters aerial footage shot through a night vision lens of rows of men exercising before daybreak, just an hour before the missiles struck the compound.

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