WASHINGTON (Islamweb & News Agencies) - Unconfirmed intelligence reports suggest that U.S. airstrikes on Afghanistan may have killed a son or son-in-law of Osama bin Laden, a U.S. official said on Wednesday.
``There are reports that perhaps a son or son-in-law might have been killed, can't confirm either,'' the official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. If it happened, the speculation centered on late last week or early this week.
The United States launched a bombing campaign on Afghanistan on Oct. 7 to destroy bin Laden and his al Qaeda network, which it blames for the Sept. 11 hijacked plane attacks that killed about 3,900 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
The highest-level al Qaeda member known to have been killed in the bombing campaign was Mohammed Atef, an Egyptian militant who was a close aide to bin Laden.
Bin Laden, his top aide Ayman al-Zawahri, and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar are all believed to be alive and in Afghanistan, U.S. officials said. Bin Laden was, at one stage, said to have with him three wives and more than a dozen children.
Rumors circulated earlier this week that Zawahri had been injured in a U.S. airstrike, but were not confirmed. Instead, more information accumulated that his family probably had been killed, one U.S. official said.
Zawahri is the leader of Egyptian militant group al-Jihad who joined forces with bin Laden and is considered to be the Saudi-born militant's top lieutenant.
Hany Seba'i, an exiled Egyptian Islamist in London on Wednesday said, ``I can confirm that he (Zawahri) is unhurt,'' but added that Zawahri's wife, two daughters and son had been killed in a U.S. attack.
U.S. officials said it was difficult to verify whether specific individuals had been killed in the bombing because finding the body was rare.
Instead, indications of who had died were determined more from the accumulation of intelligence reports of people saying that a particular person had been killed.
But it could be days or weeks for consensus to emerge about whether a particular individual was dead. ``This is a mushy, very ambiguous process,'' another U.S. official said.