The Pakistani government
has offered rewards totalling more than $1m for information
leading to the capture of six leading al-Qaeda suspects.
The "most wanted" list appeared on the front
page of two leading newspapers.
Rewards of 20m rupees ($340,000)
each were placed on the heads of Abu Faraj al-Libbi and
Amjad Hussain.
The pair are suspected
of being the main planners of two assassination attempts
on President Pervez Musharraf last December.
A senior Pakistani security official told the AFP agency
the government believed, Faraj, a Libyan, was ranked third
in the al-Qaeda hierarchy behind Osama bin Laden and his
Egyptian deputy Ayman al-Zawahri.
The official said Faraj,
alias Dr Taufeeq, replaced Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who
was captured in Pakistan in March last year.
"Faraj heads the international
operational wing of al-Qaeda, with the help of an Egyptian
accomplice, Abu Hamza Rabia," he said.
Banned groups
Apart from Faraj, those
named are all Pakistanis.
The president survived
two attempts on his life - on 13 and 25 December, 2003.
Amjad Hussain, alias Amjad
Farooqi, has also been indicted for the kidnapping and
killing of US journalist Daniel Pearl in January 2002.
The BBC's Zaffar Abbas in Islamabad says the other four
are said to be members of two banned Islamic extremist
groups that have close links with al-Qaeda.
He says it seems that all of the suspected militants are
wanted for bomb explosions and other crimes committed
within Pakistan rather than outside the country.
The rewards offer continues
a government crackdown on al-Qaeda that has led to the
arrest of more than 60 suspects in Pakistan in the past
month.
The breakthrough was the
arrest in mid-July of an alleged al-Qaeda communication
expert, Naeem Noor Khan.
According to President
Musharraf, the Pakistani security forces have uprooted
al-Qaeda operatives from their safe houses in the tribal
region near the Afghan border and the authorities are
determined to wipe them out from the rest of the country.
