A high- profile member of the Pakistan Taliban has been killed in Afghanistan, a elderly security functionary said Monday, after being on the run since 2014 when the army cracked down on the terrorist group.
Muhammad Khurasani, spokesperson for the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), failed in the eastern fiefdom of Nangarhar, the functionary said, asking not to be named.
“We’re in the process of gathering information from Afghanistan on how he was tracked down and killed,”the functionary added, declining to say who was responsible.
Afghan officers in Nangarhar told news agency AFP they were checking the reports.
Khurasani’s death comes weeks after another elderly Pakistan Taliban leader escaped unhurt from a suspected drone strike on a safe house in eastern Afghanistan.
It’s still not clear who was responsible for that attack, though Pakistan does have the capability and the US said it may still carry out strikes indeed after withdrawing from Afghanistan on August 31.
The TTP– a separate movement that shares roots with Afghanistan’s Taliban– plunged Pakistan into a period of terrible violence after forming in 2007.
Pakistan officers have said Khurasani– whose real name is Khalid Balti– ran a”terrorist training camp”in rugged North Waziristan before fleeing to Afghanistan after the army crackdown.
“He manipulated several attacks in close liaison with the TTP principal Noor Wali Mehsud on Pakistani security forces and innocent citizens while hiding in Afghanistan,”the security functionary said.
The TTP has been criticized for hundreds of self-murder lemon attacks and hijackings across the country, and for a while held sway over vast tracts of the country’s rugged ethnical belt, assessing a radical interpretation of Islamic law.
But, after the 2014 butchery of nearly 150 children at a Peshawar academy, the Pakistan service transferred huge figures of colors into TTP fortresses and crushed the movement, forcing its fighters to retreat to Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s government blazoned late last time it had entered a month-long armistice with the TTP, eased by Afghanistan’s Taliban, but that expired on December 9 after peace addresses failed to make progress.
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