Gunmen riding in a car with tinted windows near the Afghan border on
Monday shot and killed a senior Pakistani Taliban commander who helped
train and deploy the group's suicide bombers, Pakistani intelligence
officials said.
Shakirullah Shakir was riding on a motorcycle
near Miran Shah, the main town in the North Waziristan tribal area,
when he was shot, the officials said, speaking on condition of
anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.
Shakir
was a senior commander and spokesman for the Fidayeen-e-Islam wing of
the Pakistani Taliban. He once claimed to a local newspaper that his
group had trained more than 1,000 suicide bombers at camps in North
Waziristan.
No group has claimed responsibility for his killing.
Both
North Waziristan and South Waziristan are key sanctuaries for the
Pakistani Taliban, which has declared war on the U.S.-allied Pakistani
government.
Missiles believed to have been fired by a U.S. drone
hit a pickup truck in the Dra Nishter area of South Waziristan on
Monday, killing eight suspected militants, Pakistani intelligence
officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were
not authorized to talk to the media.
Dra Nishter is a Pakistani
Taliban stronghold near the border with North Waziristan and has been
hit twice before by suspected U.S. drones in recent months. The
Pakistani military launched a large ground offensive in South
Waziristan in 2009, but Pakistani Taliban fighters are still active in
the area.
The U.S. refuses to publicly acknowledge the covert CIA
drone program in Pakistan, but officials have said privately that the
strikes have killed many Taliban and al-Qaida commanders.
The
Pakistani government is widely believed to support the program, even
though officials regularly protest the strikes as violations of the
country's sovereignty — a message that plays well with Pakistani
citizens, who widely dislike the U.S.
But future Pakistani
cooperation has become less certain after the unilateral U.S. commando
raid that killed al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden last month in an army
town not far from the Pakistani capital. The U.S. kept the raid secret
from Pakistan, which humiliated the country and elicited calls for the
government to end its cooperation with Washington.
Elsewhere in
the northwest, a senior Pakistani Taliban commander said Monday that he
is splitting from the group to protest attacks against civilians, a
rare criticism of the militants by one of their own.
Fazal Saeed
said he is forming his own militant group, Tehrik-e-Taliban Islami, and
will focus on fighting NATO troops in Afghanistan. The Pakistani
Taliban, or Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, is mainly focused on battling
the Pakistani government.
Saeed, leader of the Pakistani Taliban
in the Kurram tribal area near the Afghan border, accused the group of
targeting civilians in suicide attacks and bombings in mosques.
"We
have repeatedly protested over killing unarmed and innocent people in
these attacks, but no heed was paid, so we are splitting from
Tehrik-e-Taliban" Pakistan, Saeed told The Associated Press by phone
from an undisclosed location.
Thousands of civilians have been
killed in attacks in Pakistan. The Pakistani Taliban often deny
responsibility for attacks that kill large numbers of civilians, but
they are widely believed to carry them out.
It's unclear whether
Saeed's decision to split from the group is related to plans by the
Pakistani army to launch a military offensive soon in Kurram. The army
has cut deals in the past to avoid targeting groups who fight in
Afghanistan as long as they agree not to attack Pakistan. AP
