Chief of TTP’s Jamaat-ul-Ahraar (JuA) faction Umar Khalid Khorasani killed in Paktia province
Chief of the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan’s splinter group Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA) and mastermind of Army Public School Peshawar massacre has been killed in a US drone attack in Afghanistan.
According to the media reports, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar’s chief Umar Khalid Khorasani has been killed in Paktia province of Afghanistan along with eight other senior commanders of Jamaat-ul-Ahraar.
In earlier reports Chief Umar Khalid Khorasani had sustained critical injuries in the US drone strike carried out near Pak-Afghan border in Paktia province of Afghanistan.
The hospital in Paktia where Khorasani was admitted for medical treatment confirmed news of his death. The notorious militant was the mastermind of the massacre of 144 children in the Army Public School massacre.
In July, Pakistan welcomed the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) decision to include Jamaat-ul-Ahraar in the list of entities subject to travel bans arms embargos and freezing of assets.
Afghan President Dr Ashraf Ghani had telephoned Mian Nawaz Sharif former prime minister in July 2016, for informing him the killing of Umar Mansoor in a drone attack in Afghanistan.
According to Reuters Umar Mansoor was educated in Islamabad and later at a seminary. He worked as a labourer in Karachi before he joined the TTP in 2007. He is said to have close ties to Mullah Fazlullah who was behind the attack on Malala Yousufzai.
Usman Mansoor Hafizullah will replace Umar Khalid as the faction’s commander in Darra Adam Khel and Peshawar regions, as per TTP’s Spokesperson Muhammad Khorasani who sent an email to journalists on Wednesday.
On December 16 2014 armed Taliban stormed into the Army Public School, killing 147 school children and teachers in one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in Pakistan’s history, this appalling massacre shocked not only the Pakistani nation but the whole world, and prompted a paradigm change in the country’s counter-terrorism strategy.