Al Qaeda emissary to the North Caucasus and the chief coordinator of international terrorists in the volatile region was killed in a special operation in Chechnya, the national counter-terrorism committee said on Wednesday.
"In the Chechen Republic Abdullah Kurd was a member of the so-called Arab groups of al Qaeda under the command of Khattab, Abu al Walid and Abu Havs, whose criminal activity was suppressed before by the Russian FSB [Federal Security Service] with the participation of law enforcement officers," the committee said in a statement adding that Kurd took on control of the North Caucasus al Qaeda after these groupings were earlier destroyed.
Abdullah Kurd along with another North Caucasian terrorist mastermind Doku Umarov organized most of the terrorist attacks involving suicide bombers in Russia. Kurd was also a coordinator of foreign financial inflows for the criminals. Kurd came to Russia's Northern Caucasus in 1991 through the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia.
On Sunday, U.S. Navy SEALs shot al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a mansion in Pakistan during a special operation. An unidentified woman and three men, one believed to be bin Laden's son, were also killed.
A DNA test proved that the corpse of the dead man belonged to bin Laden, who has topped the FBI's most wanted list for the past decade.
MOSCOW, May 4 (RIA Novosti)
