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Mehsud Killed in US Drone Attack with Wife: Reports

Pakistan has said that country’s Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, it believed, was probably killed yesterday in the same US drone attack, in which his wife was killed. The death remains to be confirmed, though.

Needless to add, Mehsud’s death could result in a heavy blow to Taliban movement in the Pakistan which was run and commanded by Mehsud, who has a five-million-dollar-US bounty on his head following Washington’s branding him “a key Al-Qaida facilitator”.

According to media reports, Pakistan’s security officials who supervise operations in Waziristan said that Mehsud was dead. However, the civilian government has still to confirm this.

“Information is coming from that area that he is dead,” Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters in comments broadcast by private TV channel Geo.

“The good news is that the information is coming from his group,” said Malik, but added: “I am unable to confirm unless I have solid evidence.”

Some news agencies reported citing tribesmen on condition of anonymity that Mehsud was killed with his wife in a US drone strike in his family home in the Laddah area of South Waziristan on Wednesday.

It may be mentioned that the US Central Intelligence Agency, with the tacit cooperation of Islamabad, has executed dozens of attacks in Pakistan using unmanned Predator and Reaper drones over the past year, but declines to discuss the strikes publicly.

Islamabad and Washington have called liquidating Mehsud a strategic aim in the fight against Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked extremists whom the United States has accused of posing an existential threat to nuclear-armed Pakistan.

“Baitullah Mehsud is one of the most dangerous and odious people in the entire region,” US regional envoy Richard Holbrooke told reporters in Islamabad late last month.

In Washington, a US official said Thursday there was “some reason to believe Mehsud may be dead but it cannot be confirmed at this time for certain”.

Islamabad publicly opposes suspected US strikes, saying they violate its territorial sovereignty and deepen resentment among the populace. But it has also posted a bounty of 615,000 dollars for Mehsud – dead or alive

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