ISLAMABAD/KABUL: A blast in eastern Afghanistan led to the death on Sunday of Omar Khalid Khorasani, a top leader of Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) whose suicide bombings killed more than 300 people, according to several reports quoting senior intelligence officials.
Khorasani’s Jamaat ul-Ahrar (JuA), a splinter faction of the TTP, is one of the dozens of armed militant factions — including al-Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State — operating in Afghanistan.
Khorasani was among four commanders of the militant group killed in the blast in eastern Paktika province.
Born Abdul Wali, Khorasani was travelling with Hafiz Dawlat, Mufti Hassan and his “son-in-law” (whose identity is yet to be ascertained) in the province on the border with Pakistan when their car was hit by a roadside bomb on Sunday evening, The Khorasan Diary, an online journalists-run platform, said.
Quoting a TTP spokesperson, the platform confirmed Khorasani’s death, adding it was anticipating a “detailed statement”.
BREAKING: The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) spokesman has confirmed the death of Omar Khalid Khorasani, a Senior Commander of the TTP from Mohmand. “A detailed statement will be issued soon” said Muhammad Khorasani.
— The Khorasan Diary (@khorasandiary) August 8, 2022
The four commanders were said to be living in Afghanistan’s Kunar and Nangarhar provinces. They were travelling to Paktika’s Birmal district “for consultation”, sources told Gandhara.
According to Gandhara, Hassan was among nearly a dozen TTP commanders who pledged allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed in a US raid in Syria in 2019. Whereas, Dawlat was considered to be an important TTP commander and a confidant of Khorasani.
In October 2017, it was widely reported that Khorasani had been killed by a suspected US drone attack in Afghanistan. However, he emerged alive and a year later, the US put him on its Rewards For Justice wanted list with a $3 million bounty on his head.
There was no immediate comment from Afghanistan’s Taliban government, the TTP or Islamabad.
The news comes at a time when Pakistan is in contact with the group’s leadership to discuss a peace agreement. A truce has already been in place between the TTP and Pakistan Army for the past two months.
‘BIG BLOW’
Born in a village called Lakaro in the Mohmand tribal region, Khorasani started out as an anti-India man fighting in occupied Kashmir, according to a long-time friend who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.
He later joined the TTP in 2007 to fight the government to establish strict Islamic law.
In 2014, Khorasani left the TTP after a leadership quarrel to form JuA. The group gained attention in September 2014 when it announced it was supporting Islamic State and rejecting the main TTP leadership.
By March 2015, however, the group was again swearing loyalty to the main TTP umbrella leadership.
Still, JuA never specifically disavowed Islamic State either, and several attacks inside Pakistan have been claimed by both groups.
In 2016, the United States designated JuA as a terrorist group.
Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Programme at the Wilson Research Centre think tank, recalled that Khorasani’s death had been reported several times in the past.
Khorasani was a major figure in TTP and his death would be a “big blow” to the group, he said on Twitter.
Omar Khalid Khorasani, a top TTP leader, has reportedly been killed in Afghanistan. Huge blow to TTP, if true (he’s been wrongly reported dead in the past). Major figure within the group. Brutal beyond words. And incidentally he once claimed to have sheltered Ayman Al-Zawahiri.
— Michael Kugelman (@MichaelKugelman) August 7, 2022
He described the commander as “brutal beyond words”.
