Pakistan says no clue on report of Zawahri's fate

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - The Pakistan military said on Saturday it had no information about a U.S. media report that al Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al Zawahri, might have been critically wounded or possibly killed by a missile attack, though a senior intelligence officer rejected the report.

An al Qaeda chemical and biological weapons expert, Abu Khabab al-Masri, was killed on Monday along with five other people in a suspected U.S. missile strike in Pakistan's South Waziristan region on the Afghan border.

American television network CBS News said it had obtained a copy of an intercepted letter, dated a day after the attack, purportedly from a Pakistani Taliban commander urgently requesting a doctor to treat Zawahri.

The letter, which CBS said was reportedly written by Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, referred to Zawahri by name and said he was in "severe pain" and his "injuries are infected."

Pakistani military said it could not confirm the report.

"We don't know anything about this," military spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas said.

A senior Pakistani intelligence officer, however, rejected suggestions that Zawahri was present when al-Masri was killed.

"It's absurd," he told Reuters, adding that the only notable casualty had been al-Masri.

He said al-Masri's wife and children had been wounded in the missile strike and were taken for treatment to Wana, the main town in South Waziristan.