Baitullah Mehsud, the leading Taleban commander in Pakistan, has been killed in a CIA missile strike. His death deals a heavy blow to the Islamic insurgency, which presents the greatest threat to the country’s survival.

Mehsud, 35, and one of his two wives died when a missile fired by a US drone struck her father’s house in the tribal region of South Waziristan, according to several Pakistani officials and a Taleban commander.

The former bodybuilder, who suffered from a kidney ailment, was being treated with an intravenous drip on the roof of the compound at the time of the attack on Wednesday, a senior Pakistani intelligence official told The Times.

Another local intelligence official, based near South Waziristan, said: “I’m 100 per cent sure Baitullah is killed. Don’t check his fate any more as he is now under the soil.” Kafayat Ullah, a Taleban commander, confirmed that Mehsud and his wife had been killed but declined to give details.

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Pakistan will try to exploit the opportunity presented by Mehsud’s killing to isolate his group from the Afghan Taleban

Catherine Philp

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Other Taleban sources said that he had been buried in a village close to his home town of Makeen, after which his tribesmen had gathered at an undisclosed location to choose a new leader.

Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, said that authorities would travel to the site to verify the death of a man blamed for a string of recent terrorist attacks on Pakistan, including the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the former Prime Minister, “According to my intelligence this news is correct, but we are investigating,” he said. “To be 100 per cent sure, we are going for ground verification.” The United States — which called Mehsud a key al-Qaeda “facilitator” and had a $5 million reward on his head — said that it could not confirm his death but that there was a “growing consensus among credible observers that he is indeed dead”.

Robert Gibbs, a White House spokesman, said: “Baitullah Mehsud is somebody who has well earned his label as a murderous thug. If he is dead, without a doubt the people of Pakistan will be safer as a result.”

The Taleban was already on the backfoot after taking control of the northwestern region of Swat in April, only to be driven out by the army. How great a setback Mehsud’s death proves to be will depend on how his followers respond and to what extent the Government and the army exploit his death and the power vacuum that it leaves, analysts say.

“The Taleban movement survived the death of its leaders in the past, so it is too early to say that it is a decisive blow,” Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador and now a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington, said.

Many regional experts doubt that his death will help Western troops fighting the Taleban in Afghanistan as he had focused mainly on Pakistan’s Government and security forces. It could improve the Government’s chances of establishing its writ in South Waziristan and limiting the Taleban’s ability to organise suicide attacks across the country.

Hasan Askari Rizvi, a political and security analyst, said: “This presents an opportunity for Pakistan’s Government to assert itself in the tribal areas. The Taleban will be weak and there will be internal problems. For the next couple of months, they won’t be in a position to do anything because Baitullah had such firm control.”

Although semi-literate and holding no religious title, Mehsud transformed himself into Pakistan’s most powerful militant leader and one of the world’s most feared terrorists in the space of a few years. He declared himself leader of the Pakistan Taleban in late 2007, grouping about 13 factions in the northwest and turning the region into the main operations hub for al-Qaeda.

Since then he has been blamed for a series of suicide attacks, including the one that killed Bhutto, the wife of the current President, Asif Ali Zardari, in December 2007.

Those who met Mehsud said that he fitted the mould of a classic Pashtun tribal leader — ruthless and shrewd — but possessed additional qualities. He was softly spoken, deeply religious and maintained an unusually low profile, having learnt the hard lessons of other militant leaders who grew too enamoured of the spotlight.

Last year he held a rare news conference in South Waziristan to discuss his fight against the United States. “It is the top desire of my life to obtain martyrdom,” he said.

Among his estimated 20,000 followers, he had a reputation as a fearless fighter. He never slept in one place for long and travelled with a small entourage to avoid drone strikes.

Increasingly frequent and accurate US drone operations over the past two months had severely limited his movements and ability to carry out attacks, say Pakistani officials.

They said that he had not been seen in public for weeks and only narrowly escaped in June when a US missile hit the funeral of another senior Taleban commander. Mehsud had left a few minutes earlier.

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