PESHAWAR: A pair of suspected US missile strikes killed a senior Pakistani Taliban deputy and other militants in the border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan, officials said on Friday.
Four Pakistani intelligence officials and three Taliban commanders told Reuters on Friday that two separate US missile strikes on Wednesday killed the fighters.
One of the strikes, they said, killed a Pakistani Taliban commander, Khan Said, alias Sajna, and three more people, when missiles struck his pick-up truck in Margha village of Birmal district in Paktika province of Afghanistan.
The NATO-led Operation Resolute Support in Afghanistan said it had no information about the strike.
The officials sought anonymity because they weren’t authorized to disclose the information. They are based in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and have informants on the ground on both sides of the border.
They said on Friday they have also been picking up militants’ chatter through phone intercepts in which they were talking about Sajna’s killing. Three Pakistani Taliban commanders confirmed their account.
Sajna has been an important militant commander of the Pakistani Taliban and had close links with the Afghan Taliban, the officials said.
Two of the officials said they were trying to confirm reports of another suspected US drone strike in North Waziristan on Pakistani side of the border.
The second strike hit a compound in Gurwek town of North Waziristan, killing seven militants, the three Taliban commanders said.
North Waziristan and Paktika province in Afghanistan are adjacent to the border, and the officials and the militant commanders may have been reporting the same strike as two separate ones.
The border region has long been home to local and Al-Qaeda linked foreign militants. It is off limits to journalists and verifying any information independently is difficult.
US drone strikes in the border regions of Pakistan have picked up since US President Donald Trump took office in January 2017, though they are a long way off their peak in 2010.
Relations between Washington and Islamabad have frayed in recent months after Trump’s angry tweet on Jan. 1 about Pakistan’s “lies and deceit” over its alleged support for the Afghan Taliban and their allies. Last month, the United States suspended about $2 billion assistance to Islamabad.
Pakistan denies sheltering militants and accuses Washington of not respecting Pakistan’s sacrifices in the war on militancy.
“There’re still several drones flying here,” one of the three Taliban commanders said on Friday speaking by phone from the Paktika province.
US drone strikes kill Pakistani Taliban commander
US drone strikes kill Pakistani Taliban commander
Afghan Taliban says Pakistan bombs Kabul in fresh escalation
KABUL: The Afghan government said on Friday that Pakistan had carried out fresh strikes on Kabul and several other provinces.
Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a post on X that Kabul, Kandahar, Paktia, Paktika, and some other areas, were targeted.
Pakistan has killed at least 641 Afghan Taliban operatives and injured more than 855 in the ongoing conflict between the two sides since last month, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said on Wednesday.
Islamabad has said its airstrikes, which have at times directly targeted the Afghan Taliban government, are aimed at ending Kabul’s support for militants carrying out attacks on Pakistan. The Taliban has denied aiding militant groups.
Fresh clashes between the two neighbors began on Feb. 26 after Afghanistan’s border forces launched attacks against Pakistani military installations. Kabul said the attack was in retaliation for Islamabad’s airstrikes earlier in February. Both forces have since then engaged in the worst fighting between them in decades.
Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have remained strained since the Afghan Taliban seized power in August 2021. Pakistan has witnessed a surge in militant attacks across the country in recent months that it blames on militants it alleges are based in Afghanistan. Kabul denies the allegations and insists that its soil is not used by militant groups for attacks against other countries.
While Afghanistan has voiced the desire for dialogue, Pakistan has repeatedly ruled out talks, saying it will continue targeting militant hideouts through “Operation Ghazab lil Haq” until Kabul desists from supporting militants.
