Pakistani gunship helicopters attacked Taliban bases today, killing 11 militants and keeping up pressure after the reported death of the Pakistani Taliban leader in a US missile strike last week.
The US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, said yesterday said there were signs of disarray within the group following the apparent death of Baitullah Mehsud.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan's efforts to suppress Islamist militants on its side of the border are vital for a US-led bid to stabilise neighbouring Afghanistan, where Taliban have threatened to disrupt the August 20 presidential election.
Pakistani and US officials are almost certain that Mehsud was killed along with his second wife and some bodyguards in a strike on his father-in-law's house in South Waziristan near the Afghan border on August 5.
But Mehsud's aides insist he is alive.
Pakistani helicopters attacked several bases run by Hakeemullah Mehsud, one of Mehsud's main commanders who is seen as a possible successor, in the Kurram and Orakzai ethnic Pashtun tribal regions northeast of Mehsud's South Waziristan powerbase.
"We have reports that eight militants have been killed," Fazal Rahim, a government official in Orakzai, told Reuters.
An intelligence official in the nearby Kurram region said three militants were killed in air strikes there.
Hours later, a pro-government Pashtun tribal elder and three other people were killed in a bomb attack in South Waziristan.
"He was travelling in his car when a suicide bomber riding a motorbike blew himself up," said an intelligence official in Wana, the main town of South Waziristan.
Reuters