Pakistani Taliban leader 'killed'
Updated on 07 August 2009
Pakistan's most wanted man, the Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, is believed to have been been killed in a US missile attack in a remote region of.
An aide of Mehsud, suspected of involvement in the assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, said he was dead.
And Pakistan's Foreign Minister said there were intelligence reports that he'd been killed in the attack on his father-in-law's house on Wednesday.
The missile was fired by a US drone, hitting the building in the village of Makeen in the Zangarha area, nine miles north east of Ladha in Pakistan's South Waziristan tribal region which borders Afghanistan. His wife and bodyguards were confirmed to have been killed in the attack. Mehsud has a $5m US bounty on his head.
Mehsud declared himself leader of the Pakistan Taliban in late 2007 and his fighters have been behind a wave of suicide attacks inside Pakistan and on western forces across the border in Afghanistan.
He has also been linked to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December 2007, a charge he has denied.
Intelligence officials and relatives had confirmed earlier that Mehsud's second wife had been killed in the missile strike that targeted her father's home in an outlying settlement close to Makeen village in the South Waziristan tribal region.
Pakistani diplomats believe the Taliban leader's death is a major coup for the government, but many believe it may rebound on western troops in Afghanistan if the Taliban now change from Mehsud's focus from Pakistan's government and security forces.
Sajjan Gohel from the Asia Pacific Foundation told Channel 4 News at Noon that Mehsud's death was significant "to the extent that Baitullah Mehsud was perhaps the biggest threat to Pakistan's own internal stability" but that he will be replaced.
"Another member of the Mehsud clan will replace him and that will be an ongoing problem," he said. "You can keep eliminating people, but unless you dismantle the infrastructure that the Taliban uses, attacks will continue."
Mr Gohel also warned of revenge attacks in the short term.
