The Islamic State group’s leader in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Hafiz Saeed, was killed last month in an air strike in Nangarhar province, the Pentagon said Friday (Saturday in Manila).
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Saeed “was known to directly participate in attacks against United States and coalition forces, and the actions of his network terrorized Afghans, especially in Nangarhar”, he added.
The so-called Khorasan Province was created by ISIL, also known as ISIS, in 2015 encompassing areas in Pakistan, Afghanistan and parts of Central Asia.
A U.S airstrike last month reportedly killed the leader of the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan branch according to the Pentagon.
Afghan authorities erroneously believed Saeed had been killed in another strike in July 2015, when a United States drone targeted dozens of IS-linked cadres in restive Nangarhar province, close to the Pakistani border.
A splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan Jamaatul Ahrar ( TTP-JA) had also claimed its responsibility for that attack.
Though the statement did not specify if a drone was involved, according to Dunya News, BBC was informed that Khan was indeed killed in a drone-strike. The U.S. military statement does not include say others were killed. Mullah Akhtar Mansour, a Taliban leader in Afghanistan, was killed in a US airstrike in Pakistan in May this year.
The drone strike occurred in July, during joint monthlong US special forces and Afghan military operations against Islamic State in Nangarhar. Khan was then made leader of ISIS in Khorasan. He was formerly a commander of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), but switched allegiance to the Middle-East based IS in October a year ago. The Taliban reject al-Baghdadi as leader of an envisioned worldwide caliphate.
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In Afghanistan, Taliban and Islamic State fighters have battled over territory in Nangarhar, though both have recently been more busy defending against US and Afghan assaults. The militants are mainly in the country’s eastern region.
