 British forces have killed a senior al-Qaeda fugitive in a raid on a house in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, security sources say. Officials named the dead man as Omar Farouq, a top lieutenant of Osama Bin Laden in south-east Asia. Farouq was captured in Indonesia in 2002 but escaped from a US military prison in Afghanistan last year. Security sources say he was hiding in Basra and was not known to be actively operating in the area. | If I just wanted to hide out, I'd pick someplace quieter. |
| Pretty significant kill here. Omar would be Binny's/Ayman's in-country controller. |
A British military spokesman said forces came under fire and that the man they were trying to detain was killed in the exchange.
| Ummm... Which upazila in Basra did the Brits catch him in? |
 He said there was apparently nobody else in the building, so there were no further casualties, either among the British troops or anybody else.
| So who bumped Omar off? The Brits? Or his "bodyguards"? |
The British military said only that they believed the wanted man belonged to a terrorist group, but security sources in Basra later named the dead man as Omar Farouq.
| "Omar, speaking for Boskone, out!" |
They said he was a significant figure in the international al-Qaeda movement.
Born in Kuwait of Iraqi parents, Farouq is believed to have joined al-Qaeda in the early 1990s and trained in Afghanistan. He became a top lieutenant of Osama Bin Laden in south-east Asia and he is believed to have been planning a series of bomb attacks on US embassies there when he was arrested in Indonesia in 2002.
To the considerable embarrassment of the Americans, he and three others escaped from the US military prison at Bagram airbase in Kabul last year. He even appeared in a video on an Arab TV station to boast about it. But he was tracked to Basra. Security sources say he was simply hiding out there and that his presence did not mean there was an active international al-Qaeda cell operating in the Basra area.
| Right. I'll buy that for a dollar. |
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