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| Tahir Yuldashev, from a propaganda tape released in 2006. |
A Taliban commander confirmed the death of the leader of the al Qaeda-linked Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.
Tahir Yuldashev was killed during a US airstrike in late August, an unnamed senior Taliban commander told The News.
"[It is] true he is dead," the Taliban leader told the Pakistani newspaper. "Unfortunately he was staying at the same house which was struck by the drone in South Waziristan in August."
While the commander did not identify the location of the strike, there was only one attack in late August, the Aug. 27 strike in the village of Kanigoram in Taliban-controlled South Waziristan. Eight Taliban fighters and Uzbek fighters were reported killed in the attack.
Yuldashev's death was first reported on on Sept. 28, when a man who said he was a bodyguard for Yuldashev called Radio Ozodlik, the Uzbek service for Radio Liberty, and said the leader had died from wounds one day after the strike. According to the caller, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan was trying to hide Yuldashev's death.
A senior Taliban leader had denied Yuldashev was killed during an interview last Friday."Qari Tahir Yuldashev is alive and safe," Qari Hussain Mehsud, the notorious trainer of child suicide bombers and a senior commander in the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan told Dawn. "Reports about his death in a drone attack are baseless."But Pakistani intelligence officials have insisted Yuldashev was killed in the strike. "The man has kicked the bucket," a senior Pakistani government official told Dawn last week. Yuldashev reportedly was rushed to a hospital in the neighboring district of Zhob in Baluchistan province after losing an arm and a leg during the strike.Yuldashev's successor has not been formally announced. The man who identified himself as Yuldashev's bodyguard said Yuldashev had been replaced by "an ethnic Tatar by name of Abdurakhman." An Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan leader known as Zubair ibn Abdurakhman is said to serve as the group’s spokesman as well as a leader of a faction of the group.Another report in Dawn indicated that a leader named Usman Jan has taken control of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.
Fifth senior terrorist killed since the beginning of August
According to the Taliban commander who confirmed Yuldashev's death, the terrorist chieftan was terrified of being killed in a US airstrike."None can escape death as finally he died in a drone attack that worried him a lot," the Taliban leader said.Read more: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/10/tahir_yuldashev_conf.php#ixzz0T3xZYE55
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