The leader of Pakistan’s Taliban, who is suspected of involvement in the bombing of a Central Intelligence Agency base in Afghanistan, narrowly escaped a strike by US drones yesterday that killed 13 suspected militants, Pakistani security officials said.
A senior Pakistani official said Hakimullah Mehsud may have been wounded when missiles hit a compound where he was believed to have been hiding. The CIA has launched a string of attacks on targets in Pakistan’s tribal areas since last month’s suicide attack on their base in eastern Afghanistan.
“For the Americans, Hakimullah Mehsud is now their public enemy number one. They want to target him at any cost,” the Pakistani security official told the Financial Times. “It was a close call for Hakimullah. He seems lucky to have survived.”
Video footage aired at the weekend showed Mr Mehsud seated next to a Jordanian doctor-turned suicide bomber, who managed to kill seven CIA personnel in the bombing of the base.
The CIA attack followed an elaborate game of espionage in which the Jordanian, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, had managed to convince CIA agents that he might be able to offer them valuable information in their hunt for the leaders of al-Qaeda.
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