KABUL: The leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Mullah Fazalullah, was killed on Wednesday in a US drone strike in Afghanistan’s eastern Kunar province, Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammad Radmanesh said on Friday.
Fazalullah, who had a bounty of $5 million on his head, “was a terrorist leader,” Radmanesh told Arab News. “His death will have a multifaceted impact.”
A spokesman for US forces in Afghanistan, Lt. Col, Martin O’Donnell, told Arab News in an email: “US forces conducted a counterterrorism strike, June 13, in Kunar province, close to the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which targeted a senior leader of a designated terrorist organization.”
Meanwhile, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Friday said the Taliban is honoring its three-day cease-fire that began Thursday night in response to his truce. He expressed hope for its extension.
Ghani said he had spoken overnight with Saudi King Salman, who pledged his “full support for the truce and peace” in Afghanistan.
“This is the first cease-fire in the contemporary history of Afghanistan, and I want to congratulate the people for that,” Ghani added, saying he welcomes any step that leads to the end of bloodshed in the country.
Before declaring its truce, the Taliban unleashed a series of deadly attacks against government forces in various parts of the country, ignoring Ghani’s cease-fire, which began on Tuesday and will last for three more days. The US drone strike did not violate Ghani’s truce, O’Donnell said.
Afghanistan confirms killing of Pakistani Taliban leader
Afghanistan confirms killing of Pakistani Taliban leader
- US officials claim the drone strike targeting the TTP chief is “not a violation” of the temporary truce offered by President Ghani to the Taliban militants
- Fazlullah’s death is a major loss for Pakistani Taliban in years and apparently the first on the Afghan soil
Related
Islamist militants show ‘unprecedented coordination’ in Burkina Faso attacks
- The assaults were on several towns in the north and east including Bilanga, Titao, Tandjari and Nare
- The operations targeted military detachments, civilian convoys and market areas
DAKAR: Islamist militants have killed dozens of soldiers and civilians and overrun an army detachment over the past week in coordinated attacks across multiple regions of Burkina Faso, according to internal reports by two diplomatic missions reviewed by Reuters.
The operations by Al Qaeda–linked Jama’at Nusrat Al-Islam wal-Muslimin show the JNIM is increasingly able to mobilize across large swathes of territory at one time, said the reports, which described a list of locations and places that came under assault.
Burkina Faso’s military rulers seized power in a coup in 2022, promising to improve security. But militants’ attacks have increased in the West African country as state forces battle an insurgency that has spread across the Sahel from Mali.
The assaults were on several towns in the north and east including Bilanga, Titao, Tandjari and Nare, the diplomatic reports said. One also described an assault in the eastern city of Fada N’Gourma and flagged another in the northern Ouahigouya area.
“These attacks, which were almost simultaneous and spread across several provinces, demonstrate unprecedented coordination between militants and the junta’s inability to contain the assaults,” said one of the internal reports, which put the death toll at more than 180.
The other gave no toll but said the incidents appeared coordinated and involved several hundred militants serving JNIM and possibly Daesh affiliates.
The operations targeted military detachments, civilian convoys and market areas, it said.
JNIM has said it killed scores of troops from the Burkinabe army in attacks in the past week, US-based SITE Intelligence Group said on Monday.
Burkina authorities did not respond to a request for comment on the assaults or casualty reports.
INJURED GHANAIANS RETURN HOME
In the northern town of Titao, militants attacked an army base and set a market on fire, the internal reports said.
Nearly 80 soldiers and pro-government militia members were killed, one said. The other said about 10 civilians were killed there.
The dead civilians included eight tomato traders, Ghana’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday.
SITE quoted a media unit for JNIM as saying the insurgents had seized military vehicles, guns and other possessions in the assaults. More than a decade of insurgencies in the Sahel has displaced millions and engendered economic collapse, with violence pushing further south toward West Africa’s coast.
JNIM claimed nearly 500 attacks in Burkina Faso in 2025 and nearly 300 in Mali, SITE’s director, Rita Katz, said in a social media post on LinkedIn.
