ISLAMABAD: US and Pakistani officials meeting on Sunday said they were heartened by signs of a rift between Pakistani Taleban factions after the apparent death of militant leader Baitullah Mehsud.
Mehsud was the overall head of the Tehrik-e-Taleban Pakistan (TTP), a loose confederation of 13 factions. He is believed to have been killed in a US missile strike on Aug. 5.
“I can say that since Baitullah Mehsud, there’s confusion, there’s disarray and there’s a lot of reports of infighting within the TTP,” Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told a joint news conference with Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Before arriving in Islamabad late on Saturday, Holbrooke said Mehsud is gone and “it looks like there is a struggle for succession among his commanders.”
On Saturday night, fighters from a rival, less anti-government faction, led by Maulvi Nazir Wazir, were ambushed and 17 were killed.
An intelligence official and a spokesman for Maulvi Nazir’s group blamed the Mehsud group.
Taleban officials have also denied Mehsud is dead, without offering proof that he is alive.
Earlier in the day, a Pakistani air strike killed 16 Mehsud fighters and wounded 32, according to intelligence officials in the area.
A spokesman for Mehsud’s group, Azam Tariq, said only civilians were killed in the air strike.
“The Pakistani government is following US policies and killing our people but we won’t spare them. We’ll take revenge,” Tariq said.
It is difficult to judge the validity of claims and counter claims by the government or militants as the Waziristan region is closed off to outsiders.
— With input from agencies
