ISLAMABAD: A tribal leader and top rival to Pakistan’s feared Taleban chief Baitullah Mehsud was shot dead yesterday, police said, as the army readied for an assault on Mehsud’s wild northwest base. Qari Zainuddin, a young rising militant leader who was increasingly critical of his clansman Mehsud’s use of suicide bombings targeting civilians, was killed at a house in the northwestern town of Dera Ismail Khan.
The assassination comes a week after the army said it was extending a northwest offensive against militants into the lawless tribal belt along the Afghan border — a campaign Zainuddin told local media he would support.
Also yesterday, a suspected US missile strike hit a Mehsud stronghold, killing six people in the tribal South Waziristan region, where Pakistani fighter jets have also been pounding militant targets ahead of a full-scale offensive. “According to preliminary reports, the tribal warlord (Zainuddin) was asleep in his office after morning prayers when one of his accomplices opened fire on him,” local police official Salahuddin Khan told reporters.
Salahuddin said Zainuddin was pronounced dead at a hospital in Dera Ismail Khan town. Police and intelligence officials identified the shooter as a guard named Gulbudin Mehsud, and Zainuddin’s aide Baz Mohammad said the gunman “was an agent of Baitullah Mehsud.”
Pakistani troops are wrapping up an almost two-month-long operation against Taleban rebels in northwest Swat Valley, and are preparing to launch a second front against Mehsud and his network along the rugged tribal belt.
Security officials, meanwhile, said a US drone fired missiles at Taleban buildings in South Waziristan, with six suspected militants killed. An army spokesman on Monday refused to say when the full onslaught in the tribal belt would begin, but said the operation was against Mehsud and his network “which is involved in most of the terrorist attacks in the country.”
— With input from agencies
