(Previous Incident Code: Ob261 )

Badar Mansoor, the commander of a Pakistan Taliban faction with strong links to al Qaeda, was among up to eight people killed in a 4am attack by the CIA in Miranshah, North Waziristan, the second US strike in 24 hours. AFP named the other dead as Qari Fayaz, Maulvi Faisal Khurasani, Qari Mushtaq and Yasir Khurasani. However an unnamed Taliban militant said three of the dead were called Qari Imran, Qari Mushtaq and Qari Khurasani while the fourth was unidentified. He told The News:

Badar and others had gathered at the house of Qari Imran at Zafar Colony market in Miramshah when a drone fired missiles at the house.

However Central Asian Online reported Badr Mansoor’s real name was Qari Imran. There was confusion about whether civilians had also died or were only injured in the strike. Reuters cited a Pakistan Taliban commander saying Mansoor’s family died alongside him.

He was living in a small rented house with his wife and children in Miranshah. He, his wife and two other members of his family died on the spot.

Other sources stated either that one wife was killed, one wife and one child, or that one or both wives were injured in the attack, ‘possibly the wife and daughter of Mansoor’. An unverified al Qaeda press release announced Mansoor’s ‘martyrdom’ and claimed Mansoor’s wife or possibly his sister-in-law was wounded; it did not mention further casualties. Badar Mansoor (aka Fakher Zaman) took over the local leadership of al Qaeda after the death in a drone strike of Ilyas Kashmiri in summer 2011; according to analysts he was responsible for recruiting militants to al Qaeda from within Pakistan. AFP reported Pakistani intelligence officials as saying ‘Mansoor was responsible for attacks in Karachi and on the minority Ahmadi community that killed nearly 100 people in the eastern city of Lahore in May 2010.’ Officials told Reuters that ‘the death toll could rise because of damage to buildings next to the one targeted by the drone.’ Three policemen were murdered in Peshawar on February 24 by militants calling themselves the Sheikh Abdullah Azaam Brigade. Six other officers were wounded in the triple suicide bombing of a police station, which the Brigade said ‘was to avenge the killing of Badr Munir in a drone attack. The group warned that there would be more such attacks,’ according to The Nation. On March 8 al Qaeda’s media wing released a nine-minute eulogy for Mansoor, claiming:

America is now more eagerly attacking the Pakistani government’s targets. The drone program is being run with the full consent, permission and cooperation of the Pakistani government.

The News later claimed that according to its sources in the security establishment this strike – and one on January 10 2012 – ‘was carried out on a tip off provided by the Pakistani intelligence community.’