A U.S. airstrike this month in southeast Afghanistan killed the militant behind the Marriott hotel attack in Islamabad and an assault on Sri Lankan cricket team, the Pentagon said Saturday.
The killing of al-Qaeda operative Qari Yasin vindicates Pakistan’s position that militants attacking Pakistani state and civilians have found sanctuaries in Afghanistan.
The strike that killed Yasin in Afghanistan’s Paktia province was conducted March 19.
In September 2008, the suicide truck bombing at the Marriott motel in the Pakistani capital, killing more than 50 people, including two U.S. service members.
Yasin was also behind other attacks, the Pentagon said, including an attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in March 2009. That attack killed eight people, including six police officers and two civilians.
The attack on cricketers in Lahore was a terrible bow to Pakistan as international tema refused to visit the country.
“The death of Qari Yasin is evidence that terrorists who defame Islam and deliberately target innocent people will not escape justice,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said in the statement.
Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have nosedived in recent months as militants operating out of Afghanistan last month carried out a spate of terror attacks including a bombing in the compound of a revered Sufi shrine in Sehwan, Sindh.
Terrorist attacks killed 125 people in Islamabad following which Islamabad closed its border with Afghanistan for more than one month, and has in recent days started fencing the porous border along the tribal areas.
