Taliban leader killed in U.S. drone strike

A U.S. drone strike killed the head of the Pakistani Taliban in Afghanistan’s eastern Konar province, Afghan officials said Friday, eliminating a notorious insurgent commander who had ordered attacks on schoolchildren in Pakistan, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai.

Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammad Radmanesh said the Pakistani Taliban leader, Mullah Fazlullah, “was killed in the coalition drone strike; this is confirmed.”

The U.S. military in Afghanistan confirmed that it carried out a “counterterrorism strike” on Thursday in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan that targeted “a senior leader of a designated terrorist organization.” The statement did not name Fazlullah or specify that anyone was killed.

A U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Col. Martin O’Donnell, said U.S. and NATO forces continue to adhere to a unilateral, weeklong cease-fire declared last week by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. However, he noted that the ceasefire applies to the Afghan Taliban and “does not include U.S. counterterrorism efforts” against a local branch of the Islamic State extremist group, al-Qaida “and other regional and international terrorist groups.” The Pakistani Taliban, known locally as Tehrik-e-Taliban, is separate from the Afghan Taliban, although it is now based largely on the Afghan side of the border.

Pakistan’s military refused to comment on the report of Fazlullah’s death saying any information would have to come from Washington. Yet Fazlullah’s death would be welcome news in Pakistan, where the government has repeatedly complained that Fazlullah and his Tehrik-e-Taliban had found safe havens across the border in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Kabul and Washington both complain that Pakistan has for years allowed Afghanistan’s Taliban free movement as well as medical treatment for battlefield wounds.

Still, the recent cease-fire announcement by Afghanistan’s Taliban is being at least partially credited to Pakistan, which some observers say has been pressing the leadership to accept Ghani’s recent peace overtures.

In his Eid greeting this week, Afghan Taliban chief Haibatullah Akhunzada repeated the Taliban demand for direct talks with the United States before opening negotiations with the Afghan government. Until now, Washington has refused.

Fazlullah, regarded in Pakistan as a particularly ruthless militant, was widely reviled for ordering a bloody attack on a Pakistani army school in December 2014 in the northwestern city of Peshawar. More than 140 children and their teachers were massacred. Some of the victims were as young as 6 years old.

Mohammad Akhtar, whose 12-year-old son Fahad Khan died in the 2014 massacre, said he had been waiting for confirmation of “terrorist Fazlullah’s” death.

“Thank God, he is dead,” he said after returning from a visit to his son’s grave.

Two years earlier, Yousafzai, 15 at the time, was gunned down in her native Swat Valley for advocating girls’ education. She survived a serious head wound and went on to become the youngest Nobel peace laureate in 2014.

Radmanesh, the Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman, said the strike that killed Fazlullah occurred early Thursday shortly before the Afghan Taliban replied to the government’s cease-fire by starting a three-day truce of its own to mark Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday that follows the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan. He said two other insurgents were killed with Fazlullah.

However, the Associated Press reported, Sakhi Mashwani, a lawmaker from Konar province, said five other insurgents were killed. He said the U.S. drone targeted a vehicle in which Fazlullah and the other militants were riding.

Mashwani said dozens of people, including Fazlullah’s brother, Moheen Dada, gathered Friday in the Ghaziabad district of Kunar province, to offer prayers for the dead Taliban leader.

In Yousafzai’s home town of Mingora, residents welcomed Fazlullah’s death, AP reported.

“We witnessed the brutality of the Taliban in Swat when Fazlullah and his men were present here, and we are happy to know that he has gone to hell,” Idrees Khan, a member of a local elders peace committee, told the news agency. “People in Swat will feel safer after the killing of Fazlullah.” Information for this article was contributed by William Branigin and Sayed Salahuddin of The

Washington Post; and by Amir Shah, Riaz Khan, Sherin Zada, Kathy Gannon and Munir Ahmed of The Associated Press.