Taliban confirms killing of top commander Omar Khalid Khorasani, demands probe

New Delhi: The Taliban has confirmed the killing of a top Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) commander, Abdul Wali Mohmand alias Omar Khalid Khorasani, in Afghanistan and sought an investigation into the incident by the Taliban government.

TTP sources, however, declined to comment when asked whether the body of Khorasani would be repatriated to his native Safo village or would be buried in the area adjacent to Mohmand tribal district, according to The Express Tribune.

According to Taliban spokesman Muhammad Khorasani, senior TTP leader Omar Khalid Khorasani and two other members of the banned outfit were killed in a roadside bomb attack in Afghanistan on Sunday evening.

According to a local source, the TTP leaders were travelling for consultation when their vehicle hit a roadside mine on Sunday. No group so far has claimed responsibility for the killing.

Who was Omar Khalid Khorasani?

Khorasani, who belonged to the Mohmand tribal district, was considered a top member of the TTP -- the militant group which wants to impose the law of Sharia across Pakistan. He carried a bounty of Rs 10 million on his head.

Khorasani had joined the Tehreek-e-Taliban Afghanistan first. In 1996, when the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, most of the manpower came from the tribal districts and the local Afghans, reports The Express Tribune.

But when the US toppled the Mullah Omar regime in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks on World Trade Centre in New York and Pentagon in Washington, Khorasani returned to his village in 2002 and formed the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) along with Baitullah Mehsood, to wage a war against the government.

Later, Omar and a majority of the TTP members from the Mohmand agency parted ways with the TTP and formed a splinter faction Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan Jamaat Ahrar (TTP-JA) in 2014.

The then TTP chief Maulvi Fazalullah had sacked him after he had announced the formation of his own group Jamaat ul Ahrar, which comprised almost all the Taliban leaders from the Mohmad Agency. Omar had accused the TTP leadership of deviating from the outfit's ideology.

Who were other TTP members killed? 

Hafiz Dawlat from the Orakzai tribal district was an important member of the group and a close trustee of Khorasani, while Mufti Hassan hailed from the Malakand division and pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the deceased leader of the Islamic State terrorist organisation.

TTP intelligence chief Abdul Rashid alias Uqabi Bajauri was also killed in a landmine blast in Kunar province of Afghanistan on Sunday morning, according to local Afghan sources.

The news comes after the outlawed group and Pakistan reached a deadlock during their talks as the outfit refused to budge from its demand for the reversal of the merger of the erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) with the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan, the report said.

No end in sight

Hundreds of TTP activists had fled to Afghanistan when their sanctuaries were destroyed after successive operations by the Pakistan army, following the horrific attack on Peshawar's Army Public School in 2014. Pakistan hoped after the Taliban took over Kabul last year in August that they would not allow the TTP to operate from Afghan soil but instead of expelling the rebels, who supported them during their struggle against the NATO troops, the Taliban asked Pakistan to sort out the issue through talks.

The powerful Haqqani group of the Afghan Taliban has been leading the role of a facilitator but so far without any success.

With input from agencies

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