US drone strike in Pakistan kills four, including senior al-Qaida member

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan - A senior member of al-Qaida and three other suspected militants were killed in Pakistan on Sunday when a US drone attacked a house they were in, Pakistani military officials said.The attack came a day after Pakistani forces killed a major al-Qaida leader, Adnan el-Shukrijumah. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation had offered $5 million for his capture in connection with a plot to bomb the New York subway system.Four Pakistani military officials said a senior member of al-Qaida was among the dead in the strike by a missile-firing drone on Sunday. They identified him as Omar Farooq and said he operated in Afghanistan and Pakistan.One official said Farooq, also called Ustad Farooq, was in his early thirties and was head of al-Qaida's regional media department."He is the first Pakistani to be appointed to a senior-level position in al-Qaida," a military official told Reuters."He has been key in pushing al-Qaida to focus on South Asia and helped evolve al-Qaida's South Asia policy and specifically its anti-India activities. It was on his advice that al-Qaida officially declared the Pakistan army an apostate army."