KABUL: A NATO airstrike in eastern Afghanistan killed a dozen militants including a senior leader of the Taleban in Pakistan, the international military coalition said yesterday, dealing a blow to armed militants operating on both sides of the countries' porous border.
The strike in Afghanistan's eastern Kunar province killed Mullah Dadullah, the self-proclaimed Taleban leader in Pakistan's Bajur tribal area that lies across the border, late Friday afternoon, coalition spokesman Maj. Martyn Crighton said.
Dadullah reportedly took over after Bajur's former Pakistani Taleban leader, Maulvi Faqir Mohammed, fled to Afghanistan to avoid Pakistani army operations.
He was responsible for the movement of fighters and weapons, as well as attacks against Afghan and coalition forces, a coalition statement said yesterday. It added that Dadullah's deputy, identified only as Shakir, was also killed in the strike along with 10 other militants, and that an assessment made in conjunction with Afghan security forces determined no civilians had been killed or injured.
The airstrike was in Kunar's Shigal district, which lies about 15 kilometers from the Pakistani border, but Crighton would not say whether an unmanned drone or manned aircraft had launched the missiles.
A spokesman for the Pakistani Taleban, Ahsanullah Ahsan, said Dadullah was killed in a drone strike in Kunar. He said Maulana Abu Bakar has been named as the new chief of the Bajur region.
Pakistani intelligence officials said Dadullah and 19 others were killed in the attack. Initially, they said the strike was on Pakistani territory, but later they conceded it was in Afghanistan.
Militant hideouts along the Afghan-Pakistan border have been a source of tension for both governments as well as for the coalition, with each saying the others are not doing enough to expel the various pro-Taleban factions.
The Pakistani intelligence officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media, said Friday's coalition airstrike occurred after a cross-border attack by Pakistani Taleban militants who came from Afghanistan. The Pakistani intelligence officials said the militiamen and army soldiers fought the militants for hours but eventually repelled the attack.
Jahangir Azam Khattak, a local Pakistani government official, said dozens of militants attacked a Pakistani post manned by anti-Taleban militiamen in the Salarzai area of Bajur. He said six militants were killed and four tribesmen were wounded. However, Crighton said there was no coordination between Pakistani and coalition military leaders on the airstrike.
“This was an independent operation and not associated with any others,” he said.
Taleban-affiliated militants operate on both sides of the porous border, with various groups targeting both coalition forces in Afghanistan and the Pakistani military.
Pakistan has complained of cross-border attacks by militants hiding out in eastern Afghanistan and has criticized Afghan and US-led coalition forces for not doing enough to stop them or expel them from Afghan territory.
The US and Afghanistan, however, have long criticized Pakistan for its failure to prevent militants from carrying out attacks in the opposite direction.
A Kunar provincial government spokesman, Wasifullah Wasifi, said four wounded Pakistani citizens have been hospitalized in Kunar and will be questioned about the activities of the Taleban inside Afghan territory.
Key Pak Taleban leader Mullah Dadullah killed in Afghanistan
Key Pak Taleban leader Mullah Dadullah killed in Afghanistan
Philippine VP Sara Duterte faces new impeachment bids as 1-year reprieve ends
- House voted to remove Duterte last year but process was stopped by Supreme Court
- Daughter of ex-president Rodrigo Duterte is seen as the frontrunner for 2028 vote
MANILA: Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte was hit with new impeachment complaints on Monday, in a relaunch of a political fight she survived last year.
The two complaints were filed to the House of Representatives accusing Duterte of misusing government funds — an accusation she already denied in 2025, when the House voted to remove her from office, but was prevented by a Supreme Court verdict, which stopped it citing constitutional safeguards.
The verdict gave Duterte temporary immunity against the same or similar complaint for one year, which lapsed in mid-January.
The first refiled complaint was endorsed by the three-member Makabayan bloc — a coalition of parties representing labor, peasant, youth, and human rights advocacy groups in the House — while the second was by Tindig Pilipinas, a coalition of pro‑democracy and civil society groups.
Both accused Duterte of betrayal of public trust over her alleged misuse of public funds and corruption, and one revived allegations that she threatened to assassinate her former ally President Ferdinand Marcos.
Representative Leila De Lima from the Mamamayang Liberal Party-list, who endorsed the Makabayan complaint, said in a statement that while last year’s impeachment move was stopped by the Supreme Court “based on a technicality,” now there are “sufficient grounds and impeachable offenses that could be proven during the hearings of the Committee on Justice.”
Duterte is the first sitting vice president to face impeachment in the country’s history. She has been embroiled in a row with Marcos, following the collapse of a powerful alliance between their families that brought them a landslide victory in the 2022 election.
Last year, she faced several impeachment complaints by a number of legislators and activist groups over a range of issues, including an alleged death threat that she publicly made against Marcos, his wife and the House speaker in 2024, and allegedly misusing millions of dollars in public funds.
The daughter of former president Rodrigo Duterte, widely seen as a frontrunner for the 2028 presidential election, has consistently denied wrongdoing, describing the moves against her as a political vendetta.
While last year’s attempts to remove Duterte from office were stopped, this time efforts are wider, according to Ben Cy, a lawyer with experience in political and criminal cases, as another complaint filed last month to the Office of the Ombudsman by former senator Antonio Trillanes — a vocal critic of the Duterte political family — who accused the vice president of plunder, malversation and graft.
“It will go to the impeachment court. There will be a trial based on the information released by Trillanes,” Cy told Arab News. “These I think are the strong cases.”
