PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A senior commander of
Pakistan’s Taliban was killed by a blast in eastern Afghanistan, the militant
organization said Tuesday.
اضافة اعلان
Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) said Abdul Wali — a
notorious commander who used the alias Omar Khalid Khorasani — had been
“martyred in an attack by the enemy”.
A TTP source told AFP that many commanders wanted to
call off a shaky ceasefire agreed with the Pakistan government as a result of
Wali’s death, but mediators from Afghanistan’s Taliban persuaded them to hold
out.
The Pakistan and
Afghanistan Taliban are separate
groups, but share a common ideology.
The source told AFP that Wali and three companions
were killed when a blast hit their car as they were returning from a meeting
with the TTP’s top leader.
Afghan authorities have accused Pakistan in the past
of carrying out cross-border raids — including using drones — but Islamabad
rarely acknowledges such action.
Wali has been a thorn in the side of the Pakistan
military for over a decade.
In 2014 he formed a separate, more-militant faction
of the Taliban known as Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, which claimed responsibility for some
of the deadliest attacks in the country — including a suicide bomb in Lahore on
Easter Sunday in 2016 that killed 75 people.
He announced a merger with the TTP two years ago,
and this June the umbrella group declared an “indefinite ceasefire” with
Islamabad after peace talks brokered by the Afghan Taliban began in Kabul.
Since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan
last year, Islamabad has increasingly complained of attacks by the TTP,
especially along the porous frontier with the country.
On Tuesday
Pakistan’s military said four soldiers were killed in a suicide attack on a
military convoy near the frontier in North Waziristan, where the TTP are
prominent.
Kabul insists it will not allow Afghan soil to be
used by militant groups plotting against its neighbors.
Last week,
US President Joe Biden announced that
Al-Qaeda chief Ayman Al-Zawahiri was assassinated in a US drone strike in
Kabul, calling into question the Taliban’s promise not to harbor militant
groups.
The Taliban later issued a carefully phrased
statement that neither confirmed Zawahiri’s presence in Afghanistan nor
acknowledged his death.
The peace talks have angered many in Pakistan, who
remember brutal attacks by the TTP — including on schools, hotels, churches,
and markets.
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