ISLAMABAD: The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) on Friday confirmed the death of Abdullah, son of the TTP chief Fazlullah, in the March 7 drone strike.
TTP spokesman Mohammad Khorasani said that 20 other militants were also killed in the strike along the Pak-Afghan border near Bajaur.
Pakistani intelligence officials and a Taliban leader had earlier said that the American spy aircraft struck a TTP training centre of suicide bombers in Afghanistan’s eastern Kunar province on Wednesday, killing 21 militants, including Abdullah.
Pakistani officials said on Thursday that the US drone fired two missiles on the militants in the mountainous Shaltan district when they were conducting training.
Senior TTP commander Yasin was also among those killed. He was teacher of suicide bombers, according to a Taliban source.
Pakistani officials have long been saying that members of the TTP and other Pakistani groups have fled to Afghanistan following the military’s offensive in the country’s tribal regions and Swat Valley in the northwest.
Intelligence officials said that those killed in Wednesday’s strike belonged to different areas of northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The TTP also posted online photos of all slain men and claimed that the US drone hit a religious school and killed students and teachers. The group’s spokesman claimed that Pakistani intelligence agents had shared information about their centre. A Taliban source had earlier told Daily Times that the TTP Bajaur, Gul Muhammad, was running the camp and earlier reports suggested that he was also present in the area but a Taliban official later denied the report. Gul Muhammad is the brother of Pakistani Taliban leader Maulvi Faqir. Gul Mohammad was arrested in Nangarhar in February 2013. Pakistan had sought his extradition but Kabul had refused his handover.
Sources said, “A majority of TTP militants have sanctuaries there and they use Ghakhi area to enter Bajaur for attacks.”
An influential Pakistani Taliban leader, Jan Wali, also known as Ahmad Sheena, was killed in the same area on December 27 in a bomb blast. Another TTP Bajaur chief Dadullah was also killed in a US drone strike in August 2012.
It is the second time in less than a month when the TTP militants came under drone strike. Last month, the TTP confirmed the killing of its deputy chief Khan Said Sajna in a US drone strike in Afghanistan’s Paktika province. There is a long list of senior militant leaders who have been killed in Afghanistan, almost all by the US spy aircraft or ground operations by the American forces as well as infighting. Umar Narai, also known as Khalifa Umar Mansoor, who had claimed the 2014 brutal attack on the Army Public School, was also killed in a US drone strike in July 2016.
Hafiz Saeed Khan, so-called Daesh chief for Khorasan province, was killed in US drone strike in 2016. Khan had earlier headed TTP Orakzai. Former Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq was killed in September 2016 in Paktika province.
Published in Daily Times, March 10th 2018.
