DERA ISMAIL KHAN: Pakistani Taleban commanders acknowledged Tuesday that the militants’ top leader, Baitullah Mehsud, was dead, ending weeks of claims and counterclaims over his fate following a US missile strike on his father-in-law’s home this month.
Hakimullah Mehsud and Waliur Rehman, two of Mehsud’s top aides and reportedly rivals to succeed him, called The Associated Press to say that their leader had died Sunday of injuries from the Aug. 5 strike in South Waziristan, 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 claim.
The Taleban had insisted for weeks — in periodic, sometimes contradictory telephone calls to media from various commanders — that Baitullah Mehsud was still alive following the missile strike, while US and Pakistani officials said he was almost certainly dead and a leadership struggle had ensued.
Hakimullah Mehsud and Rehman denied the reports of infighting in their Tuesday evening call to AP, repeating an earlier Taleban announcement that Hakimullah Mehsud now leads the Pakistani Taleban and adding that Rehman would head the Al-Qaeda-linked movement’s wing in South Waziristan.
They said they were calling together — handing the telephone back and forth to each other at an undisclosed location — to dispel reports of disunity. They spoke to an AP reporter who had interviewed both and recognized their voices.
“Our presence together shows that we do not have any differences,” Rehman said.
Hakimullah Mehsud, believed to be about 30-years-old, made a name for himself within the militant structure with his ruthless rule in the tribal districts of Orakzai, Khyber and Kurram, security officials say.
He was behind many attacks on NATO supply trucks heading to foreign troops over the border in Afghanistan, once posing for journalists with a US military Humvee vehicle reportedly snatched from one of the convoys. The loss of Baitullah Mehsud — Pakistan’s most-wanted militant — is a significant blow to the Taleban. His Tehrik-e-Taleban Pakistan, or Pakistani Taleban Movement, had provided a degree of unity among an array of regional and tribal factions, and under his leadership, posed a growing threat to the Pakistani government. He was suspected in dozens of suicide bombings and other assaults, including the 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. He was also accused of mounting attacks on US and Afghan forces in neighboring Afghanistan.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik said in an interview with state television earlier Tuesday that authorities were “close to their (the militant’s) jugular” and vowed to continue the fight to crush the Islamist extremists.
