Amman: A suicide bomber who killed eight people at a CIA base in Afghanistan was an al-Qaeda triple agent who duped Western intelligence services for months before turning on his handlers, jihadist websites boasted on Tuesday.
The Jordanian intelligence services, believing the bomber to be their double agent, brought him to eastern Afghanistan with the mission of finding al-Qaeda number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the websites and Western intelligence agents cited by US media said.
But instead he blew himself up at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost province near the Pakistani border, killing seven CIA agents and his Jordanian handler, a top intelligence officer and member of the royal family.
The deaths of the seven agents marked the US Central Intelligence Agency`s worst single loss of life since the bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 and President Barack Obama was to hear a scathing report on US intelligence-gathering in Afghanistan later today.
Jordanian media gave no details of how Captain Ali bin Zeid died even though King Abdullah II, Queen Rania and virtually the whole royal family turned up at his funeral.
The slain officer`s family said that Bin Zeid had been in Afghanistan for 20 days and had been due to return home on December 30, the day he was killed.
Bureau Report
