Chinese buy US Missiles via Bin Laden

[Guest guest]

Chinese Fighters Killed in US Strikes against Kahandar

 

20 October: DEBKAfile has learned from military sources in Dushanbe

and Bishbek, capitals of Tajikistan and the Kyrgizstan respectively,

that at least 15 Chinese fighting men on the side of the Taliban,

were killed in last week's US bombing over Kahandar and in a separate

incident on the ground. This report as confirmed by Pakistani sources

in Peshawar, who discovered the Chinese presence alongside the

Taliban from their own intelligence reports on the death of the

commander of Arab Afghan troops in Jalalabad, Basir al Masri, who was

a senior aide to Osama Bin Laden and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad

chief, Ayman al Zuweiri.

 

Al Masri appears to have been caught by an American bombardment, just

as he was leaving Kahandar for Jalalabad after meeting Taliban

leaders. They warned him as he left that US Special Force units were

operating in the southern and western outskirts of the town. Because

they thought the size of his bodyguard insufficient, they offered to

a detail of their own men to see him safely past the danger zone.

Among that armed escort were five Chinese fighters. A Special Forces

unit waylaid the group and detonated explosive charges, one of which

hit Abu Basir's vehicle and a second the escort vehicles. Most of the

escort was killed, including three of the Chinese guards. The next

day, their bodies were carried into Kandahar.

 

Another 10 Chinese fighters died in US bombardments.

DEBKAfile's sources have no doubt that the Chinese combatants fought

in a Taliban unit – and were not part of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda

or its associated Egyptian Jihad forces in Afghanistan. Neither

organization admits non-Arab adherents – certainly not as guards for

its senior officers.

 

According to DEBKAfile's intelligence sources the mutually beneficial

Chinese-bin Laden relationship goes back some years. The British

daily, Guardian, carries a report Saturday by John Hooper in Milan,

claiming that three years ago, China paid bin Laden several million

dollars for unexploded American cruise missiles left over from the US

attack on his bases. Hooper quotes an alleged senior Al Qaida agent

in Europe, whose account is contained in the transcript of a secretly

taped conversation between two bin Laden adherents.

 

The Americans fired 75 missiles in the raid on bin Laden's bases in

Afghanistan, carried out on August 20, 1988, in reprisal for the

terrorist strikes against US embassies in East Africa. Forty were

found unexploded.

 

The conversation taped took place in Milan between a Libyan called

Ben Heni - who was arrested in Munich last week and accused by the

Italian prosecution of being the liaison officer between two Al Qaida

cells in Frankfurt and Milan – and a leader of the Italian cells,

Sami Ben Khemmais Essid. The Italian police had bugged the flat.

According to the Guardian report, the two men confirmed bin Laden's

close ties with China and described how the huge sums the Chinese

paid for the unexploded US missiles helped him finance his next three

years of Al Qaida operations.