ISLAMABAD, 26 January 2004 — A leading foreign Al-Qaeda member was killed by Pakistani troops in one of the fiercest operations in the northwestern tribal area in October, military officials said yesterday.

Ahmed Saeed Abdur Rehman Khadar, a Canadian national, was among the eight terror suspects killed in the operation in South Waziristan, military spokesman Maj. Gen Shaukat Sultan told AFP.

Khadar was an Egyptian-born Canadian, he said, contradicting an earlier report that he was a Canadian-born Egyptian. Khadar was killed in the Pakistan Army operation on Oct. 2 in which 18 others were also arrested, he said.

“The record with us says he was a Canadian national,” the general said adding that genetic testing established the identity of the militant who was also known as “Al-Canadi.”

Earlier, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid told AFP the identification of Khadar was established after DNA testing because his body had been badly mutilated during the operation.

Security officials said Khadar was an “established Al-Qaeda operative” and was among the network’s senior leadership. He was operating in Afghanistan but his specialization was not known, they said. Gen. Shaukat said the investigation was going on.

A senior security official earlier said Khadar’s son was also injured in the operation but his condition was stable. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the security official declined to say whether the injured son of Khadar was in US or Pakistani custody. “We don’t speak on these issues,” he said.

Khadar is the second among the eight suspects killed in South Waziristan tribal region to be identified by the US and Pakistani authorities.

Earlier, another suspect was identified as Hasan Mahsum, who was described by China as its top terrorist along with 10 other ethnic Uighur Muslim separatists, all from China’s western Xinjiang region, on its first-ever list of “terrorists”.

Mahsum, 39, was identified as a leader in the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which China said was a terrorist group.

The October operation in the remote Angoor Adda town in South Waziristan, a rugged region with a population of around 400,000, was one of the fiercest launched by Pakistani troops in the hunt for suspected Al-Qaeda fugitives since Pakistan joined the Unites States in the war on terrorism two years ago.

Two Pakistani soldiers were also killed in a gunfight with the suspects. The rugged tribal terrain has been in the spotlight as a haven for Al-Qaeda and Taleban fighters fleeing US military operations across the border in Afghanistan. Angoor Adda faces Afghanistan’s Shkin district and is just 15 kilometers from the Afghan town of Barmal, part of which was reportedly controlled by the Taleban.

More than 500 Al-Qaeda and Taleban suspects have been rounded up in Pakistan since Pakistan joined the US-led war against terrorism, which led to the ouster of the hard-line Taleban regime in Afghanistan in November 2001.

The majority of those arrested are now in the US custody at the US Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba.