Islamabad, February 01: Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud may have died from injuries sustained in a US drone missile strike in mid-January, the country’s army has revealed.
The announcement came shortly after state television reported that Mehsud died in Orakzai, an area in Pakistan’s northwest tribal region where he was reportedly being treated for his injuries.
‘We have these reports coming to us,’ army spokesman General Athar Abbas said. ‘We are investigating whether it is true or wrong.’
A tribal elder claimed that he attended Mehsud’s funeral in the Mamuzai area of Orakzai on Thursday.
Pakistani intelligence officials have said that Mehsud was targeted in a US drone strike in South Waziristan on January 14, triggering rumors that he had been injured or killed.
The strike targeted a meeting of militant commanders in the Shaktoi area of South Waziristan.
Mehsud issued two audio tapes after the strike denying the rumors. But Pakistani intelligence officials claimed that they have confirmation that the Taliban chief’s legs and abdomen were wounded in the strike.
Elsewhere a suicide bomber killed 16 people at a police checkpoint in a northwestern Pakistani tribal area where the military declared victory over the Taliban and al-Qaeda last year.
Fourteen civilians and two police officers died in the suicide attack yesterday in the Bajur tribal region, while 20 people were wounded, local government official Bakhat Pacha said.
The attacker, on foot, struck a market area in the region’s main town, Khar, he said.
Some of the wounded were in critical condition at hospitals, he said.
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The attack came a day after officials said security forces had killed 44 militants in three days of battles on the outskirts of Khar.
Pakistan waged a major military offensive against Taliban and al-Qaida insurgents in Bajur in 2008, declaring victory over the militants by February 2009.
But in recent weeks, clashes and now this latest suicide attack have signaled a deteriorating security situation in the area.
The violence comes as Pakistan’s army has focused on an offensive in the South Waziristan tribal region, the primary stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban.
That military operation is believed to have led many militants to flee to other parts of the tribal belt.
The US has praised the Pakistani operations, but also wants Islamabad to pursue militants in North Waziristan, where many of the insurgent groups are focused on battling Western troops across the border in Afghanistan.
Washington has waged its own fight in Pakistan’s tribal territories through its covert CIA-led missile program.
Last night, three US missiles hit a compound and a bunker in the Mohammad Khel area of North Waziristan, part of a surge in the drone-fired strikes.
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The mountainous area is where a suspected US drone is reported to have crashed on January 24.
Two missiles in Saturday’s attack hit the compound being used by the militants, killing seven of them, intelligence officials said.
The third killed two more insurgents in the bunker, they said.
The Pakistani Taliban are believed to have played a role in the December 30 suicide bombing of a remote CIA base in Afghanistan’s eastern Khost province that killed seven of the agency’s employees.
Analysts suspect the Haqqani network, an al-Qaeda-linked Afghan Taliban faction based in North Waziristan, also helped carry out the CIA attack.
Since the CIA was hit, the US has carried out 13 suspected drone strikes in North and South Waziristan, an unprecedented volley of attacks since the missile programme began in earnest in Pakistan two years ago.
The U.S. does not usually comment on the strikes or their targets, but officials have said in the past that they have taken out several senior al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders.
The Pakistani government publicly condemns the strikes as violations of its sovereignty, yet it is thought to have a secret deal with Washington allowing them.
–Agencies–