President Barack Obama on Monday confirmed Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed in a US air strike, hailing his death as an "important milestone" in efforts to bring peace to Afghanistan.
"We have removed the leader of an organisation that has continued to plot against and unleash attacks on American and coalition forces, to wage war against the Afghan people, and align itself with extremist groups like Al-Qaeda," the US president said in a statement.
Senior Taliban sources have also confirmed the killing to Agence France Presse, adding that a shura (council) is under way to select a new leader.
Mansour was killed in a rare United States drone strike deep inside Pakistan, Afghanistan announced on Sunday, inflicting a body blow to the insurgents and removing a major "threat" to the fragile peace process in the war-torn country.
Mansour and another militant were targeted in a precision air strike by multiple unmanned drones operated by US Special Operations forces on Saturday as the duo rode in a vehicle in a remote area near Ahmad Wal town in the restive Baluchistan province close to the Afghan border, US officials said.
The drone strike, which US officials said was authorised by President Barack Obama, showed America was ready to target the Taliban leadership in Pakistan, which Afghanistan has repeatedly accused of sheltering the militants.
Afghanistan's main spy agency said Mansour, said to be in his early 50s, was killed in a US drone attack that struck his vehicle on the main road in Dalbandi area of Balochistan around 3:45pm on Saturday.
"Mansour was being closely monitored for a while until he was targeted along with other fighters aboard a vehicle in Balochistan," the National Directorate of Security said in a brief statement on Sunday.
American patience with Pakistan running out?
The American media has termed Mansour's killing as a signal that the Obama administration was becoming "less patient" with Pakistan's "failure" to combat the Taliban insurgency.
"The strike in Baluchistan was also seen as a signal that the Obama administration was growing less patient with Pakistan's failure to move strongly against the Taliban insurgency. While Pakistan's powerful military establishment has quietly cooperated with the CIA's campaign of drone strikes against Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban in the northwestern tribal areas, it has refused past requests from the spy agency to expand the drone flights into Baluchistan," a report in the New York Times quoted former US officials as saying.
It cited officials saying that the US drone strike on Saturday against the leader of the Afghan militants signalled a "major break" with precedent as the US circumvented Pakistan in an effort to disrupt the strengthening insurgency.
The report said the US and the Afghan government have long pointed at the Taliban sanctuaries across the border in Pakistan, particularly in Baluchistan, as the main reason for the resilience of the insurgents despite a strong global campaign against them that at one time had involved nearly 150,000 international troops.
In another report, the Washington Post said that the drone strike "represents another escalation in US involvement in the war in Afghanistan by trying to cripple an insurgent group that has for years found refuge on Pakistani soil."
"This is an unprecedented move to decapitate the Taliban leadership in its safe haven of Pakistan," Bruce Riedel, a South Asia expert at the Brookings Institution, was quoted by The Post as saying.
"It exposes Pakistan's role in promoting and protecting the Taliban, and will provoke a crisis in US-Pakistan relations."
Former Pakistani ambassador to Washington Husain Haqqani was quoted in the NYT report as saying that the US' expansion of its drone campaign into Baluchistan suggests "that the US is losing patience with the promises of Pakistan.
"The Taliban insurgency will probably continue, but Pakistan has another chance to dissociate itself from backing the greatest threat to Afghan stability," Haqqani said.
Pakistani officials were alerted to the attack against Mansour only after the strike, said a top American official.
"Pakistan's relatively muted reaction, similar to its standard protests against drone strikes by American forces, might be due to the fact that, according to Taliban commanders in recent months, Mullah Mansour had repeatedly resisted Pakistani officials' pressure on him to join negotiations," the report added.
On who would succeed Mansour, if he was killed in the strike, the report said a leading candidate would be Sirajuddin Haqqani, one of Mansour's "most feared deputies," who has largely been running battlefield operations in recent months.
"While closely linked to Pakistan's spy agency, Haqqani would struggle to gain the support of the wider Taliban as his small but lethal network has only in recent months fully integrated into the larger insurgency," the report said.
