KABUL-The Afghan Taliban confirmed on Wednesday that their leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed in a U.S. drone strike last week and that they have appointed a successor — a scholar known for extremist views who is unlikely to back a peace process with Kabul.
In a statement sent to the media, the Taliban said their new leader is Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, one of Mansour’s two deputies. The insurgent group said he was chosen at a meeting of Taliban leaders, which is believed to have taken place in Pakistan, but offered no other details.
Mansour was killed in Pakistan on Saturday when his vehicle was struck by a U.S. drone plane, an attack believed to be the first time a Taliban leader was killed in such a way inside Pakistani territory. Tehreek-i-Taliban chief Mulla Mansour, who was allegedly killed in a US drone strike in Pakistan’s south-western province of Balochistan, had just returned from neighbouring Iran where he had gone for treatment.
News reports said he went there for medical treatment, but one expert told The New York Times that Iran has been quietly helping the Taliban for several years.
The United States picked up a mix of phone intercepts, tips from sources, as well as intelligence from Pakistan to track down the whereabouts of Afghan Taliban leader Mulla Akhtar Mansour, a leading US newspaper reported on Tuesday.
On Monday, President Barack Obama confirmed that the Afghan Taliban chief was killed in a US drone strike conducted close to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
According a report published in the New York Times, the US president had given the go-ahead weeks ago to the US military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) for targeting Mansour in a drone strike.
Quoting unnamed officials, the report also said that the US had told Pakistani authorities several weeks ago that Mulla Mansour was a target. There were reports that Pakistan also provided intelligence to track down the reclusive Taliban leader, said the NYT report, Mullah Mansour’s taxi was obliterated from the sky as he returned to Pakistan from Iran.

The strike targeting Mulla Akhtar Mansour on Saturday was perhaps the most high-profile US incursion into Pakistan since the 2011 raid to kill al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and sparked a protest by Islamabad that its sovereignty had been violated.
Pakistan protested on Sunday, saying the US government did not inform Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif beforehand. “This is a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty,” PM Sharif told reporters in London.
A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that Washington only notified Pakistan after the operation. Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry disclosed that a passport found at the site of the purported drone attack, bearing a different name, carried a valid Iranian visa. It added that the purported passport holder was believed to have returned to Pakistan from Iran on Saturday, the day of the drone strike targeting Mansour.
Photos of the passport, bearing the name Wali Muhammad showed a passing resemblance to some of the old photos available of Mansour. If it is confirmed that Mansour had travelled to Iran before his death, it would raise new questions about the Taliban’s use of neighbouring territories, including Iran. Pakistan also summoned the US ambassador to the Foreign Office in Islamabad on Monday and recorded its protest against the drone strike.
Source: Agencies, May 25, 2016