Pakistani Taliban leader is dead

Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud is dead, three Taliban sources and a government official said Tuesday. There were conflicting reports about where Mehsud died. The government official told CNN Mehsud died as a result of the January 14 attack in North Waziristan. He was seriously injured, and was moved to the Orakzai region, where he died and was buried more than a week ago, the official said, citing information from local pro-government militias. Other sources said Mehsud died near the city of Multan in central Pakistan while on his way to a treatment center in Karachi. Authorities have been looking into reports that Mehsud died after being wounded last month in a drone attack. Word of his death contradicts a statement by a Taliban spokesman last week that Mehsud was alive and in hiding.

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U.S. Believes Pakistani Taliban Leader Is Dead

U.S. counterterrorism officials believe Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud is dead following a missile attack last month, a senior intelligence official said Wednesday in the strongest signal that Washington has offered about the militant's fate. Neither Pakistan nor the U.S. has officially confirmed the death of Mehsud, who commands an Al Qaeda-allied movement that is blamed for scores of suicide bombings and is suspected in a deadly attack on a CIA base in Afghanistan late last year. Mehsud's death would be the latest successful strike against suspected terrorists by the U.S. and its allies. The U.S. has recently stepped up attacks from unmanned aircraft in Pakistan, and a closer collaboration with Yemen has led to recent airstrikes there. President Barack Obama highlighted the increasing success of such attacks in his State of the Union address last week.

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US kills terrorist in Pakistan but misses Mehsud

A US missile strike in Pakistan killed one of the FBI's most-wanted terrorists, a man suspected in a deadly 1986 plane hijacking with a $5 million bounty on his head, three Pakistani intelligence officials said Friday. The death would be the latest victory for the CIA-led missile campaign against terrorist targets in Pakistan's insurgent-riddled tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, a campaign that has recently escalated. One Thursday is believed to have missed Pakistan's Taliban chief.

The intelligence officials said that a Jan. 9 missile strike in the North Waziristan tribal region killed Jamal Saeed Abdul Rahim. The FBI's Web site lists him as a Palestinian with possible Lebanese citizenship. The Pakistani officials called him an al-Qaeda member, but the FBI site says he was a member of the Abu Nidal Palestinian terrorist group. Rahim was wanted for his alleged role in the Sept. 5, 1986, hijacking of Pan American World Airways Flight 73 during a stop in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi.

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Conflicting Reports on Possible Death of Hakimullah Mehsud

A CIA drone strike on a suspected militant hideout today

killed 12 people in an attack aimed at killing the top Taliban commander in Pakistan. A local tribal leader said Hakimullah Mehsud was killed in the early-morning raid but the Taliban insisted he was still alive. Pakistani officials have not yet made any claim over his fate.

In the strike a pair of missiles hit a mud-walled compound which previously housed an Islamic seminary in Pasalkot village in North Waziristan where Mehsud, the chief of the Pakistani Taliban movement, was believed to be staying. Pakistani security officials confirmed Mehsud was the target. He had succeeded Baithullah Mehsud last year after he was killed in a drone strike on his house in South Waziristan last August.

Pasalkot, which sits between North and South Waziristan, has become the main sanctuary of Taliban fighters fleeing the military operation in South Waziristan. North Waziristan is also a major stronghold for the Haqqani network, an Afghan Taliban faction with links to al-Qaeda that many suspect was involved in the last month’s suicide bombing on a CIA base in Afghanistan which killed seven agents.

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The Pakistani Taliban: Falling out

At odds with each other as well as civilisation

IT TOOK 20 days for Pakistan’s Taliban movement even to admit the death of its leader, Baitullah Mehsud, who, through force of personality and ideological conviction had turned his outfit into what American officials repeatedly called an “existential” threat to Pakistan. A power struggle gripped the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) after Mehsud was killed in his native South Waziristan by a missile fired by an American drone on August 5th. Competing factions emerged in what seemed to become a bloody succession battle, even as the group suffered from a wave of arrests, defections and surrenders.

The group, an umbrella for 13 constituent Taliban factions that came together under Mehsud in December 2007, was already under pressure. The Pakistan army, urged on by America, had launched an offensive in late April against the TTP’s Swat chapter. Then in June the army moved on to the TTP’s heartland in South Waziristan. It has since pounded them from the air, with help from American drones.

Three different senior Taliban militants have claimed to be the outfit’s new boss, exposing the disarray the new leadership inherits. Then this week the leadership was formally won by Hakimullah Mehsud. Both he and his main rival, Waliur Rehman, come from Baitullah’s Mehsud tribe of South Waziristan, which dominates the ttp. The picture is muddied by Pakistani intelligence officials, who claim that Hakimullah Mehsud, too, is dead, after a shoot-out with Mr Rehman, and is being impersonated by a relation.

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New Taliban Leader Threatens US To Avenge Baitullah’s Death

The new leader of the Pakistani Taliban threatened to strike back at the US for killing Baitullah Mehsud in a Predator attack earlier last month. "We will take revenge and soon," Hakeemullah Mehsud, who was chosen to lead the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan last weekend, told AFP. "We will give our reply to this drone attack to America."

The Taliban claimed Baitullah died on Aug. 23 of wounds suffered during the Aug. 5 airstrike that also killed his second wife and seven of his bodyguards. Hakeemullah and Baitullah were cousins; Baitullah helped Hakeemullah quickly rise through the ranks of the Taliban.

Any attack would likely take place inside Pakistan. A successful attack would help cement Hakeemullah's position as the new leader of the Pakistani Taliban.

Hakeemullah is one of the Taliban's most able military commanders who also has the ability to conduct large-scale terror attacks. His forces were behind the capture of an entire company of Pakistani Army soldiers as well as the campaign against NATO supplies moving through Khyber and Peshawar.

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Pakistani Taliban Confirm Leader Died In U.S. Strike

The Pakistani Taliban acknowledged that the militants' top leader, Baitullah Mehsud, was dead, ending weeks of claims and counterclaims over his fate following a U.S. missile strike on his father-in-law's home this month.

The Taliban had insisted for weeks that Baitullah Mehsud was still alive following the missile strike, while U.S. and Pakistani officials said he was almost certainly dead and a leadership struggle had ensued.

Two of Mehsud's top aides, Hakimullah Mehsud and Waliur Rehman, called The Associated Press to say that he had died last Sunday of wounds from the Aug. 5 strike near the Afghan border. "He was wounded. He got the wounds in a drone strike and he was martyred two days ago," Hakimullah Mehsud said. Rehman later repeated the same statement.

Both also confirmed an earlier Taliban announcement that Hakimullah Mehsud (pictured) now leads the Pakistani Taliban, while Rehman would lead the movement's wing in South Waziristan.

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