PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A Pakistani journalist has been kidnapped after photographing the metal remnants of what appeared to be a U.S. missile that killed a senior Al Qaeda leader last week, his family said Wednesday.
A day before his disappearance Monday, Hayatullah Khan had expressed fears that intelligence agencies might take action against him for sending his photos to Pakistani and international media organizations, said Ihsanullah Khan, the journalist's elder brother.
Five masked men with AK-47 assault rifles abducted Hayatullah Khan in the town of Mir Ali, about 18 miles north of Miram Shah, administrative capital of the North Waziristan tribal area that borders Afghanistan, witnesses said.
The journalist was headed toward a checkpoint east of Mir Ali to cover a student protest when the gunmen stopped his car. They took him away in another vehicle.
The Al Qaeda operative, whom Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf identified as Egyptian Abu Hamza Rabia, died Dec. 1 when an explosion destroyed a mud-brick compound in the village of Asoray, east of Miram Shah. Rabia was believed to be commander of Al Qaeda's international operations.
Residents said four other people died in the blast: two Arabs also believed to be members of Al Qaeda and two members of a local Pushtun tribe, one of whom was a 7-year-old boy.
Pakistani officials said the explosion occurred when bomb-making materials stored in the house accidentally detonated. They insisted the compound had not been attacked.
But residents of Asoray contended that the explosion was caused by a missile fired from a U.S. unmanned aircraft. They said a number of such drones fly round-the-clock over the remote border region.
Villagers said the metal remnants, which Khan photographed and filed to the European Pressphoto Agency, were inscribed with the words "guided missile."
In Khan's pictures, the fragments are also marked "AGM-114," the U.S. military's designator for the laser-guided Hellfire missile, which is carried on the remote-controlled Predator drone.
The initials "US" are also visible on the shrapnel in the photos filed by Khan, who also works for Pakistan's Urdu-language daily newspaper Ausaf and the English-language daily the Nation.
U.S. counter-terrorism operations in Pakistan are a sensitive issue for Musharraf, who is under pressure from hard-line Islamic groups and nationalists who think he has gone too far in supporting the United States.
