Pakistani Taliban confirm leader’s death

The Pakistani Taliban confirmed Tuesday that their leader, Hakimullah Mahsud, died from injuries suffered in a U.S. drone missile strike last month, an attack that forces the insurgency to find a new leader for the second time in six months.

The death of Mahsud, engineer of a devastating series of suicide attacks and raids on markets, mosques and security installations across Pakistan in the latter half of 2009, gives the U.S. another major victory in its ongoing campaign of drone missile strikes against top Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders.

A drone strike last August killed Mahsud’s predecessor, Baitullah Mahsud. Missiles fired by drones over Pakistan’s tribal areas along the Afghan border have also killed 15 senior Al Qaeda commanders since 2004.

However, experts do not expect the loss of Hakimullah Mahsud, 28, to deal a fatal blow to the Taliban as it battles the government in the country’s northwest.

After Baitullah Mahsud’s death last summer, the Taliban was able to regroup and launch some of the deadliest attacks against Pakistanis in years, including the Oct. 10 commando-style raid on army headquarters in Rawalpindi, a sprawling, heavily guarded complex. The raid left 14 military officers and civilian workers dead.

“Obviously, it’s a great setback for them in terms of morale and organizational problems. There’s no doubt about it,” said Talat Masood, a security analyst and retired Pakistani general. “It will take time for them to recover, but they will definitely recover because they have support in those tribal areas.”

Pakistani authorities initially believed that Mahsud had been injured in a Jan. 17 U.S. drone strike that targeted two cars in North Waziristan, a largely Taliban-controlled district in the tribal areas.

However, Taliban sources said their leader was wounded in a drone strike Jan. 14 in Shaktoi, a village in South Waziristan near the North Waziristan border. The sources said militants were trying to move Mahsud to Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, for treatment, but he died in the southern Punjab city of Multan, 460 miles northeast of Karachi.

alex.rodriguez@latimes.com

Special correspondent Zulfiqar Ali in Peshawar contributed to this report.