October 30, 2017•Update: October 31, 2017
By Islamuddin Sajid
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan
Key militant commander of Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Maqbool Dawar had been killed in a U.S. drone attack in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday night, the militant group said on Monday.
In a statement the TTP Dawar group said the drone targeted a compound in the eastern Khost province of Afghanistan late Sunday night and killed Maqbool Dawar, his brother Murad Ali and two other militants.
The group also released images of the dead bodies and the funeral of Dawar.
A local administration official, who spoke over the phone on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to spoke the media, refused to confirm the TTP claims. However, he said he had also heard the militants leader had been killed but officially not yet confirmed to them.
Dawar was the third key militant leader of TTP Pakistan reported killed in U.S. drone strikes in Afghanistan in the last two weeks.
On Oct. 18, Umar Mansoor, the suspected mastermind behind the carnage in a school northern Peshawar city that left over 140 people, mostly children, dead in 2014, was killed in a U.S. drone strike.
According to Pakistani media, the head of another TTP faction -- Omar Khalid Khorasani of Jamaat-ul-Ahrar -- was also killed in the recent drone strikes in Afghanistan. Neither the splinter group nor the Pakistani army officially confirmed the development.
