QUETTA/ISLAMABAD, 25 July 2007 — A former Guantanamo Bay inmate who led militants against Pakistan Army after his release blew himself up yesterday with a grenade to avoid capture by security forces, police said.
Intelligence agents cornered Abdullah Mehsud overnight at the home of an Islamist politician in Zhob, a town 260 kilometers from Quetta, police said.
Federal Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema confirmed Mehsud’s death while talking to Arab News.
“Mehsud blew himself up with a grenade and died when security forces raided his hide-out. Three of his accomplices were arrested,” Cheema told AFP separately. “It appears he did not want to be captured alive,” Cheema added.
Officials said he had recently been involved in launching cross-border attacks on NATO and US-led forces in Afghanistan.
“Intelligence reports pointed out his presence at a house and security forces mounted the raid. He sneaked into Zhob from Waziristan,” Cheema said.
The town of Zhob, in southwestern Balochistan province, borders South Waziristan. The militant leader and his companions exchanged heavy gunfire with security forces for hours after the house was surrounded late Monday, police said.
“When our forces finally entered before dawn this morning a man blew himself up to avoid being captured. He was identified later as Abdullah Mehsud,” Zhob police chief Atta Mohammad said yesterday.
Officials said the house in Zhob, where three other men were arrested, belonged to Sheikh Mohammed Ayub, a Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam deputy, and that he was not at home at the time.
Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, a federal lawmaker for the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, said Ayub had been expelled from the pro-Taleban party about four months earlier for “suspicious activities and violating party discipline.” He declined to elaborate.
During Mehsud’s time on the run, his brother Baitullah had taken over from him as one of the top Taleban commanders in Pakistan’s tribal regions. Baitullah has been linked to a wave of suicide bombings this year in Pakistan.
“It is a major breakthrough. Mehsud was involved in heinous attacks,” Religious Affairs Minister Ejazul Haq told AFP. Officials have said US-allied Afghan forces captured Mehsud, who earlier lost a leg fighting for the Taleban, in northern Afghanistan in December 2001.
He was incarcerated in the jail for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and it remains unclear why he was released in March 2004. He quickly took up arms again, leading militants in South Waziristan, a mountainous stronghold for both the Taleban and Al-Qaeda in the tribal belt.
Mehsud was wanted for the kidnapping later that year of two Chinese engineers, one of whom died in a rescue raid by Pakistani commandos, and escaped a manhunt by the Pakistan Army. Intelligence officials have said they intercepted telephone calls during the siege of the Red Mosque in Islamabad between its cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi and Mehsud. The militant told Ghazi that “if he is killed his blood will not be wasted,” the officials said. Ghazi was shot dead in the raid on the mosque on July 10.
Meanwhile, there were also fresh militant attacks on Pakistan Army posts in North Waziristan yesterday. Militants detonated dynamite at a municipal office late Monday in Miranshah, the regional capital, causing damage but no injuries, said an official.
Further north, the beheaded bodies of two soldiers abducted the night before were found yesterday morning in the Bajaur tribal area, said Sardar Yousaf, a local government official.
