US drone strike kills Pakistan Taliban leader wanted in Malala attack
US PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe KABUL: Afghan President Ashraf Ghani confirmed on Friday that Pakistani Taliban chief Maulana Fazlullah had been killed in a United States drone strike.
Fazlullah is believed to have ordered the failed 2012 assassination of Malala Yousafzai, who became a global symbol of the fight for girls’ rights to schooling and won the Nobel Peace Prize.
US forces targeted Fazlullah in a counterterrorism strike on Thursday in eastern Kunar province, close to the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, US officials said, without confirming his death.
“I spoke with Prime Minister of #Pakistan Nasir ul Mulk and Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa and confirmed the death of Mullah Fazlullah,” Ghani tweeted.
“His death is the result of tireless human intel led by #Afghan security agencies.”
Pakistan has long been accused of supporting the Afghan Taliban and providing safe haven to its leaders, charges Islamabad denies. Pakistan, in return, has accused Afghanistan of sheltering the Pakistani Taliban.
Fazlullah’s group — Tehreek-eTaliban Pakistan (TTP) in Urdu — was behind the massacre of more than 150 people at a Peshawar school in December 2014.
He went into hiding in Afghanistan in 2009, and his death “gives relief to scores of Pakistani families who fell victims to TTP terror, including the (school) massacre,” the Pakistani army statement said.