Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud killed in CIA drone strike

Hakimullah Mehsud, photographed in 2008. Photograph: A Majeed/AFP/Getty Images

The CIA's secret drone campaign claimed one of its highest profile scalps on Friday with the killing of the chief of the Pakistani Taliban by an unmanned aircraft in the country's lawless tribal areas.

Hakimullah Mehsud, the feared leader of an alliance of militant groups attempting to topple the Pakistani state, was killed when a missile struck a compound in the village near the capital of North Waziristan, according to militant, US and Pakistani sources.

Although his death has been misreported in the past, informants in the tribal area said they were confident one of the country's most vicious militant leaders was dead.

"He was targeted as he was returning to his home from a nearby mosque where he had been holding discussions with his comrades," said a military officer based in a city close to the semi-autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas, which is home to many Islamist terrorist groups.

"He was right at his front door and at least three missiles were fired."

A senior US intelligence official told the Associated Press the US received positive confirmation on Friday morning that he had been killed.

Militant and official sources added that Mehsud's driver and bodyguard were also among a total of five people killed.

Although Mehsud's four year tenure as head of Pakistan's most feared militant group has been marked by horrific attacks that have killed scores of soldiers, government officials and civilians, his death looked set to spark fury among some politicians who believe the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) should be brought in to peace talks.

All political parties unanimously supported government attempts to negotiate with the TTP at a meeting in September. Just this week Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced that talks between the two sides had finally begun.

Credit: Guardian graphics

A government official claimed Mehsud had been discussing the matter with fellow fighters just before he was killed, while the Taliban said a government peace delegation was in Miran Shah at the time of the attack.

The country's rightwing religious parties are likely to interpret the drone strike as a deliberate attempt by the US to scupper peace talks with an organisation that swears allegiance to Mullah Omar, the leader of the Afghan Taliban, which fights against Nato troops in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Sharif, who held meetings with US president Barack Obama in Washington DC last week, has repeatedly called for an end to drone strikes, despite persistent suspicions that Pakistan continues to give secret backing to the attacks.

But the US was never likely to turn up an opportunity to kill Mehsud, the mastermind of a devastating suicide bomb attack on a CIA station in Khost province in eastern Afghanistan in 2009 in which seven CIA officers died.

The ingenious plot involved a Jordanian triple agent who the CIA believed was working for them but was in fact taking orders from Mehsud. The suicide bomber was ushered into the military base to brief CIA officers on al-Qaida, and detonated his explosive vest once he had reached the inside of the base.

Mehsud later appeared in a video alongside the Jordanian, who said he carried out the attack in retribution for the death of another former Pakistani Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, who was killed in an American drone strike in August 2009.

Saifullah Mahsud, director of the Pakistani thinktank FATA Research Centre, said the movement was unlikely to be overly affected the killing of its leader.

"It's a very decentralised organisation," he said. "They've lost leaders to drone strikes before."

A burly man in his mid-30s who wore shoulder length hair, Hakimullah Mehsud became leader of the TTP following the killing of former leader and fellow tribesman Baitullah Mehsud.

Hakimullah Mehsud's death comes just weeks after the TTP chief took the risky and unusual step of granting an interview to a BBC cameraman who had travelled to Pakistan's lawless north-west.

The interview was conducted in open air despite the non-stop presence of drones in the sky.

Earlier on Friday Pakistan's foreign ministry condemned the drone attack as a "violation of Pakistan's sovereignty and territorial integrity".

In May, a drone strike killed Mehsud's second-in-command, and one of his most trusted lieutenants was captured in Afghanistan last month.