07 August,2009 11:06 AM IST | | PTI
Top Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, "a key al Qaeda facilitator" has been killed in a US drone attack in South Waziristan in Pakistan's restive tribal belt.
Quoting unnamed senior Administration officials, the popular ABC News said the US and Pakistani officials now believe that Baitullah Mehsud, head of the Pakistani Taliban, is very likely killed.
US President Barack Obama, is believed to have been briefed about it, the news channel reported. "There is reason to believe that reports of his death may be true, but it can't be confirmed at this time," an American official with access to classified intelligence reports was quoted as saying by The New York Times.
"US and Pakistani officials believe that a strike in South Waziristan yesterday "very likely" killed Mehsud. US officials said they had visual and other "indicators" that it was Mehsud, and that there is a 95 per cent chance that he is among the dead," ABC news said.
US brands Mehsud as key al Qaeda facilitator in Pakistan's restive tribal belt. Pakistani officials are trying to collect physical evidence to be certain, it said. Early this year, the Obama Administration had announced a reward of USD 5 million on his head.
Mehsud is also held responsible for the assassination of the former Pakistani Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto.
The burly al-Qaeda-linked warlord has been the target of an intense manhunt for months and has reportedly narrowly escaped previous attacks. There was a "strong indication" that Mehsud was killed in the drone strike on Wednesday, the ABC News quoted an unnamed senior US administration official as saying.
US and Pakistani officials believed the strike "very likely" killed Mehsud, it said. US officials said they had visual and other "indicators" that Mehsud was killed and there was "a 95 per cent chance" that he was among the dead.
"Pakistani officials are trying to collect physical evidence to be certain," ABC News reported. Officials in Washington and Islamabad were "scrambling to make sense of intercepted communications that seemed to indicate" that Mehsud might have been killed and by yesterday US officials "were growing increasingly confident that the Taliban leader was dead", The New York Times reported.
However, the US officials cautioned it "could be weeks before they could be certain, given the difficulty of getting to the remote location in South Waziristan to perform DNA tests".
"There's reason to believe Mehsud may be dead, but there's no confirmation at this time," an unnamed US official was quoted as saying by CNN. Mehsud and his network have been blamed for a wave of suicide attacks and bombings across Pakistan, including the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto in 2007.
Following media reports about his death in September last year, Mehsud had personally contacted journalists to say that he was safe.
The absence of any such contact several hours after the fresh reports of Mehsud's death was fuelling speculation even among militant ranks that he had been killed, Aaj News channel reported. The Pakistan government had also offered a bounty of USD 615,000.
The CIA began trying to track his daily movements, and American intelligence officials believed they had almost killed him on several occasions.
Mehsud, after receiving early education at a madrassa in Miranshah in North Waziristan, travelled to Afghanistan in the mid 1990s to fight alongside the Taliban militants.
Upon his return, Mehsud formed an umbrella group of tribal militants named Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan.
Despite several peace deals with the Pakistani government, Mehsud set up training camps for recruits, and spread his influence into the lawless districts of North Waziristan and Bajaur, as well as the nearby cities of Tank and Dera Ismail Khan.
