Authorities probe reports of Taliban leader's death

Source: Gulf news

Militants claim Hakimullah Mehsud is alive and well

• By Mohsin Ali, Correspondent
• Published: 00:00 February 1, 2010
• 

• Pakistan Taliban commander Hakimullah Mehsud (left) places his arm around Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud during a news conference in South Waziristan on May 24, 2008.
• Image Credit: Reuters

Islamabad: The state-run Pakistan television (PTV) claimed Sunday that Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud had died of wounds suffered in a January 14 US drone missile strike and secretly buried by his loyalists.
However, Pakistani military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said they were trying to verify the report while the Taliban denied the claim.
Reports of Mehsud's death first came to light after the drone strike on January 14 on his hideout in an area between North and South Waziristan. Within days the Taliban provided to media an audio recording of Mehsud.
He had taken over the command of banned Tehreek Taliban Pakistan (TTP) following the death of its chief Baitullah Mehsud in a US drone strike in August last year in South Waziristan.
The PTV report, quoting unidentified local sources, said Mehsud died on January 28 and was buried in a village in the Orakzai tribal area.
Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq told a foreign news agency by telephone that the Taliban chief was "alive and safe".
"The purpose of stories regarding his death is to create differences among Taliban ranks but such people will never succeed," the TTP spokesman said.
Major-General Abbas said the army had no information from its sources either to confirm or deny the report of Mehsud's death.
"We have these reports coming to us. We are investigating whether it is true or wrong," army spokesman Abbas told The Associated Press.
"We are investigating whether it is true or wrong."
Interior Minister Rahman Malek told private television channel ARY News that the government was also trying to verify the report.
"We [have been] hearing this news for so many days. We have received [the] news from various sources that he has been killed," Malek said.
"But I will say that we have no verifiable information from which we can confirm that he is dead, but the local elders and local population, they are saying that he has been buried."
Mehsud recently appeared in a video alongside a Jordanian man alleged to have later killed seven CIA agents in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan.
Analysts here forecast that splits and in-fighting would hit the TTP in case of Hakimullah's disappearance from the scene.
The army has already seized all bases of the TTP in South Waziristan and claims to have killed nearly 2,000 militants and made them flee to other areas in the tribal territory straddling the border with Afghanistan.
The TTP and its allied extremist groups in Punjab province of Pakistan have been carrying out suicide attacks in retaliation to the army crackdown, first in Swat region and then in South Waziristan.
In the latest incident a bomber blew himself up at a security check-post at Khar, the town in Bajaur tribal district on Saturday, killing 17 people.
Crucial victory
Mehsud's death would be an important success for both Pakistan, which has been battling the Pakistani Taliban, and the United States, which blames Mehsud for a recent deadly bombing against the CIA in Afghanistan.
A tribal elder told the AP that he attended Mehsud's funeral in the Mamuzai area of Orakzai on Thursday. He said Mehsud was buried in a Mamuzai graveyard after he died at his in-laws' home. The elder spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the Taliban.
Pakistani intelligence officials have said that Mehsud was targeted in a US drone strike in South Waziristan on January 14, triggering rumours that he had been injured or killed.