Drone strike kills planner of 2008 Islamabad hotel bombing, U.S. says

WASHINGTON — A Pakistani militant who planned a devastating truck bomb attack on a hotel in Islamabad in 2008 — which left two members of the American military and dozens of others dead — was killed in recent days by an American drone strike in Afghanistan, the Pentagon said on Saturday night.

The militant, Qari Yasin, had ties to the Pakistani Taliban, who are closely aligned with Al Qaeda, and had been linked to other terrorist plots, including one against Sri Lanka’s national cricket team.

The American strike that killed him took place on March 19 in Paktika Province, an area where many of Pakistani Taliban operatives have operated after slipping across the border in advance of the Pakistani Army’s offensive in North Waziristan in 2014.

The strike illustrates how the American battle against Qaeda operatives and their terrorist allies has continued even as the United States increases its fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

The September 2008 bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad was one of the most notorious terrorist attacks in Pakistan’s history.

Read the whole story from The New York Times.

Featured image courtesy of Reuters