Official: Al-Qaida among the dead

U.S. and Pakistani intelligence officials disagreed about al-Zawahri's death.
Newsday
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Friday's missile strike on the village of Damadola killed "four or five foreign terrorists" in addition to 18 local people, the top Pakistani official in the region said Tuesday.
The statement suggested that the attack, reportedly conducted by the CIA, at least partly hit its intended target, a gathering of Al-Qaida militants.
As many as 12 militants were invited to a dinner hosted Thursday by villagers, said district administrator Fahim Wazir in a statement.
That contradicted Damadola residents who vehemently denied to visiting journalists over the weekend that they knew or had hosted any Al-Qaida members or other militants.
At least some of the guests left the dinner about midnight, a resident told the Lahore-based Daily Times. About three hours later, rockets slammed into the village, destroying three homes, including a guesthouse where the dinner had been held.
What was disputed
Later Friday, U.S. intelligence officials in Washington told American TV networks that the CIA had killed Al-Qaida's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahri. His presence in the village has not been confirmed.
Pakistani intelligence officials quoted by The Associated Press said al-Zawahri declined the dinner invitation and sent two aides instead.
"According to our information, at least four to five foreign elements had also been killed in this incident," in addition to local residents, "but their bodies were removed from the scene within no time by their companions," said the statement by Wazir.
He said militants of a locally based group, the Tehrike Nisaze Shariat Mohammadi (Movement for the Implementation of the Shariat of Muhammad) had removed the bodies of the militants, whose nationalities were unconfirmed.
But a counterterrorism official told the AP that several of those killed were believed to be Egyptian.
The London Daily Telegraph quoted an Afghan source close to al-Qaida as saying an Egyptian named Abu Ubaida and a Syrian, Marwan Alsuri, were missing after having apparently attended the dinner.