Taliban leader killed as US drone strike destroys his car
ENGULFED in flames, this is all that remains of the car of the Taliban’s leader after it was hit by a US drone strike.
Mullah Akhtar Mansour and his driver died in the attack in Pakistan authorised by US President Barack Obama.
The Taliban and the Afghan government confirmed Mansour had been killed in a remote area on the border with Afghanistan.
Pictures were released of two bodies – one in a coffin and another on a stretcher.
Earlier in the day Afghan chief executive Abdullah Abdullah had said Mansour was ‘more than likely’ dead.
Mr Abdullah said on TV as he chaired a cabinet meeting that the death of the murderous fanatic would help attempts to bring peace to the country.
As the leader of the Taliban – which holds more Afghan territory than at any point since it was ousted from control in 2001 – Mansour banned peace talks with the government.
He was also said to be planning attacks against Afghan and US forces.
Mr Abdullah said that Mansour had ‘intensified violence against ordinary citizens, especially in Afghanistan’.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said Mansour had ‘posed a continuing imminent threat’ to US forces in Afghanistan, Afghan civilians and Afghan security forces.
He said the drone strike ‘sends a clear message to the world that we will continue to stand with our Afghan partners’, adding: ‘Peace is what we want, Mansour was a threat to that effort.
‘He also was directly opposed to peace negotiations and to the reconciliation process.
‘It is time for Afghans to stop fighting and to start building a real future together.’
With no clear successor, Man- sour’s death ‘will provoke a crisis inside the Taliban’, according to Bruce Riedel, an Afghanistan expert at the Brookings Institution think-tank. He said it could lead to guerrilla operations being compro- mised over the summer. Mansour had been deputy to Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar. But last summer it was announced that Omar had been dead since 2013, with Mansour running the organi- sation in his name. Mansour then took over as leader.
Last night Pakistan said the drone strike, which it had not been told about in advance, was a violation of its sovereignty.