Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal, the top Afghan diplomat in Pakistan, said on Friday several senior commanders and fighters were also killed along with Saeed in the strike.
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Hafiz Saeed was the head of IS’s “Khorasan province”, which includes Afghanistan, Pakistan and parts of India.
Both the Pakistani Taliban and ISIS jihadists have claimed responsibility for a horrific suicide bombing on Monday at a hospital in Pakistan which killed 73 people. It is also learnt that Afghan authorities also handed over the chopper to Pakistani authorities.
It is the second time in two years that Khan was believed killed by a drone. Afghan intelligence agents claimed he was killed in January of a year ago but the report was never confirmed.
Trowbridge said Khan, who was killed July 26, had been known to “directly participate in attacks against US and coalition forces, and the actions of his network terrorized Afghans, especially in Nangarhar”.
Hafiz Saeed Khan was killed in a USA drone strike in the Kot district of Afghanistan’s Nangarhar Province on July 26, an unidentified US defense official was quoted as saying on August 12.
Khan – a longtime commander with the Pakistani Taliban – pledged allegiance in October 2014 to the Islamic State’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
However, as a result of negotiations with Pakistan and Afghanistan governments, the Taliban freed all captives. The Taliban reject him as leader of an envisioned worldwide caliphate.
An Afghanistan security force member walks through a village in the Kot District on August 1, 2016, after Afghan forces took control of the area from Islamic State group fighters.
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Between January and early August, American warplanes conducted almost 140 airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Afghanistan, according to the US military.
