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Taliban Confirm Bin Laden Aide Killed in Kabul
By Aamir Latif
KANDAHAR Nov. 18 (IslamOnline) - The Taliban have confirmed that the deputy Operational Chief of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qa'eda network, Muhammaed Atef, was killed along with seven other al-Qa'eda members in a U.S. attack three days ago in Kabul.
Mullah Najibullah, a Taliban official in the southern Afghan town of Spinboldak, told IslamOnline of Atef's death, but he would not identify the other al-Qaeda members who died with him.
Sources said the deceased also included Sheikh Asim Abdur Rehman of Islamic Jihad, a close aide of bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zuhariwi.
Najibullah said that Osama bin Laden, was alive, but that "there is no information about his whereabouts in Afghanistan."
Although the Taliban have officially confirmed Atef's death, intelligence sources believe that he left Afghanistan soon after the U.S. air strikes began and that he had been seen in the Uzbekistan city of Khiva.
Atef, known as al-Qa'eda's deputy military chief, is suspected of helping to plan the deadly September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. He was also blamed for planning the embassy bombings in Africa in 1998 - which killed 224 people, according to a U.S. indictment that charged him with murder.
He is also accused of helping plan the downing of an American helicopter in Mogadishu, Somalia and the subsequent shootout that killed 18 U.S. Army Rangers and wounded 75 others.
He was often seen at bin Laden's side in photographs and video tapes taken in Afghanistan in the last three years. Atef was often mixed with Abu Hafz Saif-ul-Adil, who is the chief of Al-Qa'eda's Operational Network. Atef was supposed to be his successor.
Atef, whose real name was Mohammed Sobhi Abu Sitta, was born in Minoufeya, about 55 miles north of Cairo. His year of birth, while not certain, was believed to have been 1944.
According to some accounts, he joined the Egyptian police force. Others say he served two years of obligatory service in the Egyptian army.
He joined Islamic Jihad in 1981, but is not known to have played a leading role in the underground group.
He came to prominence after he moved to Afghanistan in the mid-1980s where he met Ayman al-Zuwahri, the leader of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and bin Laden's strategist. Al-Zuwahri and bin Laden were then fighting alongside Afghan
mujahideen against the Soviet occupation forces.
After the 1989 Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, Atef and bin Laden moved to Sudan where they organized al-Qa'eda cells in Africa, U.S. security sources believe.
He was convicted in absentia in Egypt in 1999 on charges of plotting subversion and was sentenced to seven years in prison for belonging to an outlawed group, Islamic Jihad, and training its members in exile in the use of explosives.
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