The Chief of Tehreek-e- Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud has been killed in a drone attack in Afghanistan.
According to sources Mufti Noor was among the key leaders of the banned organization. He was killed along with his boy guard Inqalabi Mehsud. He was reportedly hiding in Afghanistan after an operation commenced in the tribal areas. His death was confirmed by reliable Afghan sources.
The TTP leader was declared a global terrorist by the United Nations on July 16 2020.
TTP has claimed responsibility for multiple attacks across Pakistan including attacks targeting the Pakistani security forces in North Waziristan in July 2019 and against Pakistni soldiers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in August 2019. These attacks were carried out under Noor Wali Mehsud’s leadership.
The US forces targeted Mullah Fazlullah in a counterterrorism strike on June 14, in Afghanistan’s eastern Kunar province.
It was not confirmed by the US officials if the strike was successful, however the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani confirmed his death to the Prime Minister of Pakistan and the Chief of Army Staff through phone calls. Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud (Pashto/Urdu: مفتی نور ولی محسود) is a Pakistani militant and current emir of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan.
On 22 June 2018, Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud was appointed emir after the assassination of former emir Mullah Fazlullah in a US drone strike in Afghanistan. Mehsud took power over the TTP at its weakest point since its inception, as the TTP no longer holds territory in Pakistan and has been plagued by internal divisions.
Despite this, the TTP, since Mehsud's appointment appears to have been revitalized and has "grown deadlier". The US classified Mehsud as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist on 10 September 2019. In July 2020, Mehsud was included on the ISIL (Da'esh) and Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee list by the United Nations.
Noor Wali Mehsud was born on 26 June 1978 in a village in the Tiarza Subdivision of the South Waziristan region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He hails from the Mechikhel sub-clan of the Mehsud tribe, a Pashtun tribe native to the Sararogha Subdivision of the South Waziristan region.
Throughout the 1990s, Mehsud studied on and off at madrasas Jamia Imdadia, Jamia Haleemia and Jamia Farooq-e-Azam in Faisalabad, Jamia Nusratul Uloom in Gujranwala, and Jamia Ahsan-ul-Uloom and Jamia Yaseenul Quran in Karachi.
Around 1996-1997, Mehsud's religious education was interrupted as he left to Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban and allied jihadist forces against Ahmad Shah Massoud's Northern Alliance. He fought in various battles during the latter phase of the Afghan Civil War like the Battles of Mazar-i-Sharif (1997–98) and battles north of Kabul.
On his father's advide, Noor Wali Mehsud returned to Pakistan to finish his religious education, graduating in 1999. Upon graduating, Mehsud started using the title mufti denoting his Islamic religious scholarship. Over the next two years, Mehsud taught Islamic theology at Madrassa Imdad-ul-Uloom in the Gorgoray area in South Waziristan.
