PESHAWAR: A drone strike hit a house just inside Afghanistan’s border, targeting a senior member of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) but the missile apparently failed to explode, reports citing sources inside the militant group said.
One of the Taliban officials said the drone fired a missile late Thursday at a hujra, or guesthouse, on the compound of Maulvi Faqir Mohammad, a former deputy chief of the Afghanistan-based movement.
“It was around 3:30 [pm] when a drone suddenly appeared in the sky. We got worried and advised Maulvi Faqir to go to a safe place but he refused and argued it was not possible to hide in the day time,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Around half an hour later, when Mohammad left his own house to visit the guesthouse, the missile struck.
“He was about 3 metres away from the hujra room when the drone fired a missile and hit the same room. Luckily the missile didn’t explode and he and other people around him remained safe,” he said.
Two TTP sources currently in Afghanistan told AFP that Mohammad was the target of the drone strike on a compound in Chawgam village, in the eastern province of Kunar bordering Pakistan.
“Maulvi Faqir Mohammad was not present at the time […] two fighters of the TTP were wounded,” one source claimed.
The compound was being used as a base by TTP fighters from Pakistan crossing the porous border with Afghanistan, he said.
Mohammad is a former deputy leader of the TTP who spent eight years in Afghanistan’s Bagram prison before being released by the Afghan Taliban following their shock overthrow of the Western-backed government in Kabul on August 15.
The attempt to kill him in a drone strike came after talks to agree a permanent ceasefire between the TTP and the Pakistani government broke down last week after the militant movement refused to extend a month-long truce.
Formed in 2007 as an umbrella body of several militant groups, the TTP is a separate movement from the Afghan Taliban but its fighters and senior leaders have long been known to shelter in the lawless eastern border regions of Afghanistan.
Thursday marked the seventh anniversary of the TTP massacre of nearly 150 schoolchildren in Army Public School (APS) of Peshawar, an atrocity that remains seared on the national consciousness.
The attack succeeded Operation Zarb-i-Azb, a 2014 crackdown by the military which crushed the movement and forced its hardline fighters into hiding in Afghanistan.
— With input from Reuters and AFP
