US nets another top Taliban commander

posted at 8:05 am on October 27, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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A missile strike in South Waziristan has reportedly killed a high-ranking Taliban official.  The US neither confirms nor denies such attacks, but a missile strike flattened the house of Mohammed Omar, a former Taliban Army official and suspected commander of forces in the border region.  Local officials report that Omar was among the 20 dead in the attack:

A suspected US missile strike has killed 20 people, including a top Taleban commander, in north-west Pakistan, witnesses and officials say.

Mohammad Omar was among the dead when the missile, reportedly fired by a pilotless US drone, hit a compound owned by him in South Waziristan.

Omar fought with the Taleban in Afghanistan in the late 1990s.

The US has launched many missile strikes from Afghanistan against suspected militant targets recently.

This is apparently not the Mohammed Omar, known better as Mullah Omar, the leader of the Afghan Taliban in exile.  However, the strike did kill several Taliban operatives as they gathered for a meeting in South Waziristan.  Among the dead were emissaries of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud and Afghan Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, and the house was located in a stronghold of Mehsud’s.

That may give Mehsud some cause to look for a security sweep of his organization.  The US has had some very reliable intel, for the most part, on these missile strikes, although earlier this month they hit a school in error.  We seem to have a pretty good idea of the Taliban’s meeting schedule and venues, and Mehsud has to be wondering how we do that.

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