Pakistan Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud, who was thought to have been killed in a US drone attack early this year, is alive and “basically OK”, claimed a senior ISI official.
An Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency official told The Guardian: “He (Mehsud) is alive… He had some wounds, but he is basically fine.”
Mehsud was believed to have died in a drone strike in South Waziristan in January. Though a Pakistani minister had then said that the Taliban chief had been killed, his death was not confirmed by either the US or Pakistani intelligence. Mehsud, who claimed responsibility for several suicide attacks, including the one on the five-star Pearl Continental Hotel in Peshawar, was made chief of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan after his predecessor Baitullah Mehsud was killed in a drone attack in August last year.
The senior official said he had seen the video footage of the missile attack on Mehsud, but other intelligence reports had since confirmed that Mehsud had survived. There has been a significant stepping up of drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal belt.
“The US government is under pressure because it is unable to achieve much in Afghanistan. This is one way of hitting their Al-Qaida enemies, as they define them,” the official was quoted as saying. Even if Mehsud has survived, he would have been left with a weakened Taliban due to a massive army assault in its South Waziristan stronghold, the official said.
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