The US citizen killed in a missile strike in Yemen this week was the ringleader of an alleged terror cell in Lackawanna, New York, linked to al Qaeda, the Washington Postreported on Saturday, citing administration officials.
The man, identified as Kamal Derwish but also known by the alias Ahmed Hijazi, was killed on Sunday along with five other when the car they were traveling in was destroyed by a missile fired by an unmanned drone operated by the CIA.
The principal target of the attack, senior al Qaeda leader Qaed Senyan al-Harthi, was a key suspect in the bombing of the American warship USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden in 2000, which killed 17 sailors.
Derwish was not initially known to have been in the destroyed vehicle, but the CIA was aware he had returned to Yemen and described him as a "fellow traveler" in a tight circle of terror suspects atop the United States' unofficial most-wanted list, the newspaper reported.
Both the State Department and the FBI declined to comment on the report on today.
Derwish allegedly recruited six men from Lackawanna, near Buffalo, New York, who were arrested and indicted in September for supporting al Qaeda by attending a camp in Afghanistan last year, the report said. The six have all pleaded innocent.
AFP