A suicide bombing "mastermind" in the Pakistan Taliban has been
gunned down and killed in the country's northeastern tribal region, just
days after a major faction in the militant group announced it was
breaking away over ideological differences.Gunmen riding in a car
attacked Ashiqullah Mehsud, a senior commander in the leadership of the
group known formally as the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), in the
village of Urmuz in North Waziristan on Thursday before speeding off,
sources told CNN.No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, while the TTP has yet to issue a statement.
Mehsud was viewed as a
successor to Qari Hussain Mehsud, the militant group's explosives expert
whose notoriety includes allegedly recruiting children as suicide
bombers.
Pakistani intelligence sources believe the incident is the result of internal rivalries between TTP factions.The Pakistan Taliban has
been beset with months of deadly infighting, culminating in an
announcement early this month by the group's Mehsud faction that it
would be going its own way after failing to convince the leadership to
give up what it said were "un-Islamic" practices, such as attacks in
public places, extortion and kidnappings.It's the first split
since the TTP -- a coalition of militant groups -- was founded in 2007,
seeking to establish its version of sharia law across Pakistan.
Tensions within the TTP
escalated after the group's leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, was killed in a
U.S. drone strike in November last year, setting off a power struggle
among top commanders of the TTP that led to violent clashes in which
dozens of people were killed.
Appointed by a tribal
council, Mullah Fazlullah has stood at the helm of the TPP since
Mehsud's death. He hails from the country's Swat valley and is the first
TTP leader who is not a Mehsud. He has struggled to contain the
internal frictions among the group's factions, especially those within
the Mehsud tribe, which makes up the majority of the TTP.
In a statement released
last month, Azam Tariq, a spokesman for the breakaway Mehsuds, said the
TTP leadership had "fallen into the hands of a bunch of conspirators ...
involved in criminal activities like robbery and extortion."
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