A suspected USA drone strike has killed an alleged Daesh leader in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province, the Afghan national intelligence agency has claimed. Among other things, that party’s military wing, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, is accused of carrying out a November 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai, India, that killed at least 164 people. There has been no independent verification. The timing of the drone strike is significant as it came a day after Pakistan hosted talks between Afghan official and Taliban militants.
Advertisement
“I can confirm that our central spokesperson, Shahidullah Shahid has embraced martyrdom in air strikes by the Americans, British and foreign forces”.
Asif Khurshid, a spokesman for Jamaat-ud-Dawa, told CNN on Saturday that Hafiz Mohammed Saeed is alive and well in Lahore.
In efforts to foster a closer relationship, Afghanistan and Pakistan recently signed a landmark intelligence-sharing Memorandum of Operation.
Together with other ex-Taliban he declared the mountainous Tirah valley in northwestern Pakistan as his headquarters, but soon fled across the border to Nangarhar in Afghanistan when the Pakistani military launched an offensive on his base.
Pakistan has been urging the Taliban’s exiled leadership to enter peace talks and the insurgents may also be motivated by the trend of some of its commanders breaking off to declare loyalty to rival jihadists Islamic State.
But his death, if true, would be a huge loss to ISIS.
A small but increasing number of mostly ex-Taliban militants are pledging allegiance to the Islamic State in Afghanistan, making them a target of deadly strikes there by the USA unmanned aircraft.
Authorities said the United States strike had killed IS leader Hafeez Sayeed and more than 30 other militants.
KABUL (Pajhwok): President Ashraf Ghani and Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a meeting commented on the “upward trajectory” of Pak-Afghan relations, Pakistani media reports on Friday.
Advertisement
In January, a video allegedly made by Shahid was released showing recent Pakistani and Afghan ISIS recruits beading a Pakistani soldier, imitating the execution tactic of the group and its supporters elsewhere in the Middle East and Africa.
