PESHAWAR, Pakistan // Pakistani security forces have killed a Taliban commander believed to have been involoved in the Peshawar school massacre, which left 150 people dead in the country’s worst terror attack.
Named only as “Saddam”, the militant was killed on Thursday in a gunfight with security forces in the restive Khyber tribal area, which borders the north-western city where last week’s horrific attack took place.
“Commander Saddam was a dreaded terrorist, who was killed in an exchange of fire with the security forces in Jamrud town of Khyber tribal region,” a top local administration official, Shahab Ali Shah, said in Peshawar.
“Six of his accomplices were injured and arrested.”
Mr Shah said Saddam was believed to have facilitated the school attack, although the extent or capacity of his involvement was not yet known.
“Authorities are currently interrogating the injured terrorists,” Mr Shah said.
He described Saddam as an important commander in the Pakistani Taliban, or Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan.
Mr Shah said Saddam and his accomplices had been involved in several recent attacks on security forces that had resulted in heavy casualties.
The Taliban and other militants have taken refuge in Khyber from a major army offensive launched in June in North Waziristan, another restive tribal area on the Afghan border that has been a stronghold for Al Qaeda and Taliban militants since the early 2000s.
A US drone strike on a Taliban compound in North Waziristan killed at least four militants yesterday, officials said, the second such incident in a week.
Intelligence officials said missiles hit the compound of Punjabi Taliban in Kund village, killing four militants, and the compound of Uzbek militants in Mangrotai village, killing three Uzbeks.
Another drone strike in North Waziristan on December 20 killed at least five militants. The area is generally off limits to journalists, making it difficult to independently verify the number and identities of the dead.
* Agence France-Presse with additional reporting by Associated Press
