A top Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as Pakistani Taliban, commander and three other militants were reportedly killed in a roadside explosion in eastern Afghanistan, according to Pakistani media quoting Pakistani officials and militant sources.
While traveling in a vehicle with senior TTP members, Omar Khalid Khorasani, aka Abdul Wali Mohmand, who also had a $3 million bounty on his head, was killed by an unidentified explosive device in the Barmal district of the Afghan south-eastern province of Paktika.
The TTP leaders were reportedly traveling in the Paktika district of Barmal “for consultation” on August 7 when their car struck a roadside mine, according to a Pakistani publication citing unnamed sources.
So far, Taliban security authorities in Paktika province have made no statements to the media.
The TTP commander is reported to have been a former journalist and poet who studied at several madrasas in Pakistan’s Karachi.
The top national rewards program run by the US Department of State, Rewards for Justice (RFJ), revealed that “Wali reportedly operates from Afghanistan’s Nangarhar and Kunar Provinces.”
The current peace talks between the TTP and the Pakistan government have come to a halt after the group refused to back down from its demand that the merger of the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) with Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province be reversed.
The Afghan Taliban requested the negotiations, which resulted in a one-month cease-fire in November.
This comes at a time when the al-Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was killed by US drone attacks in Kabul’s Sherpur area.
