Top Osama deputy killed

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

Washington, Nov. 16. In what will be a major blow to the Al-Qaeda network, senior U.S. officials are saying that Mohammed Atef, a senior deputy of Osama bin Laden, has been killed in operations in and around Kabul.

Atef, a former Egyptian policeman, was apparently killed in U.S. airstrikes on a house in Kabul. ``We believe that it is true that he was killed in the U.S. bombing around Kabul'', an official has said.

Another version is that Atef may have been killed by the Special Forces on specific combat missions inside Afghanistan.

Atef is seen here as the military commander of the Al-Qaeda and one of the masterminds of the September 11 terror

attacks against the United States in New York and Washington. Meanwhile the Defence Department has said that there are no changes in operational plans as a result of Ramadan. ``We are bombing today'',a Pentagon official has said. The Bush administration has consistently ruled out any pause for Ramadan.

The Defence Secretary, Mr. Donald Rumsfeld, has said that American Special Forces are busy in ground operations in Southern Afghanistan, particularly going after Al-Qaeda and Taliban forces which did not surrender.

``They are killing Taliban that won't surrender and Al-Qaeda that are trying to move from one place to another'', Mr. Rumsfeld remarked, while travelling from Washington to Chicago. The number of Special Forces are in the ``hundreds'', according to Mr. Rumsfeld.

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