ISLAMABAD, (Reuters) – Pakistan believes Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, who has a $5 million U.S. bounty on his head, was probably killed with his wife and bodyguards in a missile attack two days ago, the interior minister said yesterday.
An intelligence officer in South Waziristan told Reuters that Mehsud’s funeral had already taken place, while Pakistani media cited their own security sources, saying Mehsud was dead.
“He was killed with his wife and he was buried in Nargosey,” the officer said, referring to a tiny settlement about 1 km (half a mile), from the site of the attack, believed to have been carried out by a pilotless U.S. drone aircraft.
Diplomats in Islamabad say Mehsud’s death would mark a major coup for Pakistan, but many doubt it will help Western troops fighting the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. Most of his focus has been on attacking Pakistan’s government and security forces.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik and other Pakistani officials said all the signs were that Mehsud had been killed, but they lacked physical evidence as it was impossible to enter the Taliban controlled area in the tribal lands of South Waziristan..
“We suspect he was killed in the missile strike,” Malik told Reuters. “But we don’t have material evidence to confirm it.”
People were mourning in the settlement close to Makeen village, where Mehsud was tracked and targeted, Malik said.
He said intelligence suggested Taliban leaders were meeting somewhere in South Waziristan to decide on Mehsud’s successor.
The missile attack killed Mehsud’s brother and seven bodyguards as well as his wife, Malik added.
The wife’s death had been confirmed hours after the attack on Wednesday that targeted her father’s house.
A spokesman for the Afghan Taliban said their struggle would be unaffected by Mehsud’s reported death.
“The Taliban’s jihad against foreign forces in Afghanistan will not be affected if a Pakistani Taliban leader is killed on the other side,” Afghan Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said by telephone from an undisclosed location.
Taliban leaders presumed dead have sometimes resurfaced later and there were reports from other media quoting Taliban sources saying that Mehsud was wounded and others saying he was dead.
If Mehsud was killed, regular Pakistani Taliban spokesmen were unlikely to confirm it until a new leader was chosen.
Retired brigadier Mehmood Shah, former chief of security in the tribal areas, doubted Mehsud could be easily replaced.
“It is quite a setback for the Taliban movement. He is the one man who really organised Taliban, kept unity among them and really forwarded the agenda with a lot of … strategic thinking,” said Shah.
Mehsud declared himself leader of the Pakistan Taliban, grouping around 13 factions in the northwest, in late 2007 and his fighters have staged a wave of suicide attacks inside Pakistan and on Western forces across the border in Afghanistan.
He is accused of being behind the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December 2007, a charge he has denied. Conspiracy theories abound over who killed the former prime minister.
