US drone strike targets Taliban leader in Pakistan

Obama orders attack believed to have killed Mansour

WASHINGTON — The United States targeted Taliban leader Mullah Mansour in an airstrike Saturday near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, the Defense Department said, and a U.S. official said Mansour was believed to have been killed.

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said the United States was still studying the results of the attack, leaving Mansour’s fate uncertain.

But one U.S. official said Mansour and a second male combatant accompanying him in a vehicle were probably killed. President Barack Obama authorized the attack, which occurred on the Pakistani side of the border, and was briefed before and after it was carried out, a White House aide said. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity and were not authorized to discuss the operation publicly.

Mansour was chosen to head the Afghan Taliban last summer after the death several years earlier of the organization’s founder, Mullah Mohammad Omar, became public. The Taliban is the most powerful insurgent group in the war-ravaged country, where an estimated 11,000 civilians were killed or wounded and 5,500 government troops and police officers died last year alone.

Cook said Mansour has been “actively involved with planning attacks” across Afghanistan. He called Mansour “an obstacle to peace and reconciliation” between the Taliban and the Afghan government. It has barred top Taliban officials from joining peace talks, which have produced few signs of progress.

Members of Congress lauded the attack. One lawmaker said Mansour’s death, if confirmed, would be a significant blow to the Taliban, though not enough to allow the United States to disengage from a conflict that has involved thousands of U.S. troops for nearly 15 years.

“We must remain vigilant and well-resourced in the field, and must continue to help create the conditions for a political solution,” said Rep. Adam Schiff of California, top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., said he was glad Mansour “has met his just end” but urged stepped up coalition attacks on the Taliban.

“Our troops are in Afghanistan today for the same reason they deployed there in 2001 — to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for global terrorists,” McCain said.

The U.S. official said Saturday’s attack was carried out by unmanned aircraft operated by American Special Operations Forces. The official said the operation was launched at about 6 a.m. EDT southwest of the town of Ahmad Wal and caused no other damage because it occurred in an isolated region.

Mansour, Mullah Omar’s longtime deputy, had been the Taliban’s de facto leader for years, according to the Afghan government.

The Taliban seized power in 1996 and ruled Afghanistan according to a harsh interpretation of Islamic law until the group was toppled by a U.S.-led invasion following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.