The US designated the “Khorasan Province” – an affiliate of the Islamic State (IS) group based in Afghanistan and Pakistan – as a terrorist organisation earlier this year.
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A Pakistan military spokesman said Wednesday that the US commander of worldwide forces in Afghanistan, General John Nicholson, telephoned his Pakistani counterpart, General Raheel Sharif and “confirmed death of terrorist Umar Narai through drone strike” in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar. Mansour took credit for the attack, though the Pakistani government had previously rejected the claim and pinned it on Saddam Jan, who they killed a few days after the attack.
The Pentagon said in a statement that Khalifa was killed along with four other enemy combatants in an airstrike targeting Islamic State militants. Seven gunmen with the banned Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan were the perpetrators, officials said. Cook wasn’t specific about what kind of aircraft was used.
Mansour was sought primarily over the December 2014 attack on an Army Public School in Peshawar, an attack which killed 148 people, mostly schoolchildren.
Afghan and US officials have lately increased pressure on Pakistan to stop Taliban and their allies, including the lethal Haqqani network, from using Pakistani soil for plotting insurgent attacks in Afghanistan.
He did not say where or when the drone strike took place.
It also said the airstrike underscored the common security interests shared by the United States, Afghanistan, and Pakistan on matters of terrorism.
“The United States maintains a robust counter-terrorism partnership with Afghanistan and Pakistan”, Cook said, “and we recognize the sacrifices made on behalf of our respective militaries to pursue terrorists for the sake of regional peace and security”.
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“Only through continued cooperation will we collectively succeed in eliminating terrorist safehavens in the region”.
