ISLAMABAD: Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) confirmed on Friday that the son of its leader Maulvi Fazlullah and 20 other militants were killed in a US drone strike on a camp in the border region of eastern Afghanistan.
Pakistani officials on Thursday said the US drone fired two missiles at the militants in the rugged mountainous region in Kunar province near the border with Pakistan on Wednesday.
An intelligence field report obtained by Arab News said Fazlullah’s son Abdullah, 16, was among the dead.
TTP spokesman Mohammad Khorasani confirmed that Abdullah was killed in the March 7 strike.
“The American drone attacked a religious seminary along the Pak-Afghan border near the Bajaur tribal region on the intelligence shared by Pakistani agencies,” Khorasani said in a statement sent to Arab News. He added that the strike killed Abdullah and 20 other students and teachers.
Pakistani officials earlier said the militants were “out for physical training” when an American unmanned aircraft fired on them on Wednesday morning.
Those killed were from the Swat, Dir and Swabi districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, according to the report.
A Taliban leader familiar with TTP’s activities in Afghanistan’s border region told Arab News that most TTP leaders and fighters from KP have sanctuaries in the Shortan region, from where they can sneak into Bajaur and Afghanistan’s Nuristan province.
Pakistani officials said Fazlullah, who fled to Afghanistan after a major military operation in Swat in 2009, is leading militants from the Afghan border region. On Thursday, the US announced a $5 million bounty on his head.
