Pakistan's foreign minister said today Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, who has a $5 million bounty on his head, was probably killed with his wife and bodyguards in a US missile attack two days ago.
An intelligence officer in South Waziristan told said Mehsud's funeral had already taken place, while Pakistani media cited their own security sources, saying Mehsud was dead. The attack in Nargosey is believed to have been carried out by a pilotless US drone.
Diplomats in Islamabad say Mehsud's death would mark a major coup for Pakistan, but many doubt it will help Western troops fighting the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. Most of his focus has been on attacking Pakistan's government and security forces.
"It is pretty certain now that he is dead. Various government agencies have reported so, his own followers have said so, there are people who have been to the funeral and are witness to the burial," Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi told BBC radio today
"It is a significant development. He was the principal personality leading the Taliban movement in Pakistan. With him gone, I think there is going to be an internal struggle and disarray in their ranks, I think it will set in demobilisation. It is a great success for the forces that are fighting extremism and terrorism in Pakistan," Mr Qureshi said.
Pakistani officials say they lack physical evidence of Mehsud's death as it was impossible to enter the Taliban controlled area in the tribal lands of South Waziristan.
President Barack Obama's spokesman said tonight the United States cannot yet confirm Mehsud’s death with certainty but that Pakistanis are safer if he has been killed.
Intelligence officials and relatives confirmed earlier that Mehsud's second wife had been killed in the missile strike that targeted her father's home in an outlying settlement close to Makeen village in the South Waziristan tribal region.
In December 2007, Mehsud became the head of a new coalition called the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or Pakistan's Taliban movement. Under his guidance, the group has killed hundreds of Pakistanis in suicide and other attacks. He is believed to command as many as 20,000 fighters, among them a steady supply of suicide bombers.
He is suspected of being behind a 10-man cell arrested in Barcelona in January 2008 for plotting suicide attacks in Spain. Pakistan's former government and the CIA have named him as the prime suspect behind the December 2007 killing of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, a charge he has denied.
He also has withstood threats from within Taliban ranks. A few weeks ago, Qari Zainuddin, the leader of a renegade Pakistani Taliban faction who had criticised Mehsud's tactics, was shot to death - allegedly on Mehsud's orders.
Clashes today exposed the state of flux in the Taliban network. Fighting between Mehsud fighters and those of a more pro-government commander Turkistan Bitani, killed 17 militants in Tank, a town at the gateway to South Waziristan.
US missile attacks on Mehsud territory in South Waziristan became more frequent after Pakistan ordered a military offensive against him in June. Pakistan publicly opposes the missile strikes, saying they anger local tribes and make it harder for the army to operate. Still, many analysts suspect the two countries have a secret deal allowing the strikes.
An Afghan Taliban spokesman said today Mehsud’s death will not hurt the Taliban cause in Afghanistan.
In Afghanistan, Western countries have more than 100,000 troops fighting Taliban Islamist insurgents who ruled the country until being driven out in 2001. They believe the Afghan Taliban shelter and train across the border in Pakistan.
The Taliban movement has its roots in Pashtun tribes which straddle both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier. But Mehsud's Pakistani organisation is seen as mainly preoccupied with affairs on its side of the border, known as the Durand line after the British official who drew it during the colonial era.
"The Taliban's jihad against foreign forces in Afghanistan will not be affected if a Pakistani Taliban leader is killed on the other side of the Durand line," Afghan Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said."We feel sympathy for our brothers who fight for the same cause, but resistance against the Afghan government and its foreign allies will continue."