Shakirullah Shakir was riding on a motorcycle near Miran Shah, the main town in the North Waziristan tribal area, when he was shot, said intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.

Shakir was a senior commander and spokesman for the Fidayeen-e-Islam wing of the Pakistani Taleban. He once claimed to a local newspaper that his group had trained more than 1,000 suicide bombers at camps in North Waziristan.

No group has claimed responsibility for his killing.

Both North Waziristan and South Waziristan are key sanctuaries for the Pakistani Taleban, which has declared war on the US-allied Pakistani government.

Missiles believed to have been fired by a US drone hit a pickup truck in the Dra Nishter area of South Waziristan on Monday, killing eight suspected militants, Pakistani intelligence officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

Dra Nishter is a Pakistani Taleban stronghold near the border with North Waziristan and has been hit twice before by suspected US drones in recent months. The Pakistani military launched a large ground offensive in South Waziristan in 2009, but Pakistani Taleban fighters are still active in the area.
 

Fazal Saeed Haqqani, who was the Taleban leader in the Kurram region near the Afghan border, meanwhile, said he left to protest against what he said was the group’s “brutal” attacks on civilians.

The Tehrik-e-Taleban (TTP), or Taleban Movement of Pakistan, an umbrella alliance of about 12 militant factions, is blamed for many of the suicide bombings across the country.

Saeed Haqqani will now fight the TTP, and would continue to attack US troops in Afghanistan, said his spokesman, Hafiz Saeed. His 500 fighters have formed a new group called the Tehrik-e-Taleban Islami (TTI).

That’s good news for the Pakistani military, which has failed to break the back of the TTP despite a series of offensives against its strongholds along the Afghan border.

“Saeed’s announcement has opened a floodgate for the Taleban. It benefits the government because more cracks might be seen in the Taleban ranks in coming days,” said Rahimullah Yousafzai, an expert on the Taleban.

Mahmood Shah, former security head of seven semi-autonomous ethnic Pashtun tribal regions along the Afghan border, said: “It’s a very bold decision. It must be worrisome for Taleban militants.”

The United States has been pushing Pakistan to step up its fight against militancy since American special forces found and killed Osama Bin Laden in a Pakistani town on May 2.

The TTP has put the army on the defensive, carrying out suicide bombings, assaulting a naval base in Pakistan’s biggest city Karachi and deploying hundreds of fighters in large-scale attacks on security forces.

Saeed Haqqani is said to have close ties to the Haqqani network, one of the fiercest Afghan insurgent groups battling US-led forces in Afghanistan.