PAKISTAN:A leading pro-Taliban militant who served time in Guantánamo Bay was killed yesterday in an explosion in southwestern Pakistan as the US-backed government made a new push against Islamist hardliners.
"Our information is that Abdullah Mehsud has been killed," said Tariq Azeem, Pakistan's information minister.
Mehsud was released from US detention in Guantánamo Bay in 2004 and returned with a group of detainees to Pakistan.
Within a year, he had taken leadership of a Taliban insurgency movement, operating from Pakistan's northwestern and south-western regions bordering Afghanistan.
He won notoriety for masterminding a number of attacks on Pakistan's security forces and was believed to have planned the 2004 kidnapping of two Chinese engineers working in the border region, one of whom was killed.
Pakistani security officials said Mehsud was killed in a house in Zhob, a town in the Baluchistan province near the Afghan border, in an unexplained blast.
According to one account, he blew himself up with a hand grenade when his house was surrounded by Pakistani troops.
Another version of events suggested he died when explosives he was carrying detonated. Three other militants at the house were arrested, Pakistani security officials said.
Western diplomats said Mehsud's death was a blow to the Taliban, but not a heavy one.
"Abdullah Mehsud's task will be taken over by someone else and there's nothing to suggest his departure will in any way cause long-term disruption to the Taliban," said a senior western diplomat in Islamabad.
But security officials insisted the killing was a key development as Pakistan makes a strong new push to combat Islamist militants in the border region. Since Saturday, at least 35 militants have been killed.
The attacks have come amid alarm among Pakistani officials over the latest disagreement between the US and Pakistan regarding the war on terrorism. Pakistani officials have objected strongly to suggestions US forces may carry out attacks on suspected militant hideouts in the border region, after the latest US national intelligence estimates suggested al-Qaeda had found "safe haven" there.