(Previous Incident Code: Ob59 )

Pakistan Taliban (TTP) leader Hakimullah Mehsud and al Qaeda bomb maker Abdul Basit Usman (who has been linked to the December 2009 attack on a CIA base in Afghanistan) were reportedly killed with up to 16 other alleged militants including ‘two Arabs and several Uzbek fighters’. The strike was reportedly on the house of Muhammad Yaqoob, although Press TV claimed the site was ‘a converted religious school’. Both Mehsud and Usman (below) later emerged alive. TTP spokesman Azam Tariq told AFP:

Hakimullah Mehsud was present at the same place in Shaktoi where the drone attack took place… But he had left the area already when the drone attack took place. He is alive and completely safe.’
Rewards for Justice)

Some sources suggested he left the house ‘minutes before the assault’ while BBC Urdu reported he needed treatment for a head wound. Rumours he had been killed persisted for months after the event. Mehsud, who took over the TTP after his cousin Baitullah Mehsud was killed in August 2009 (Ob29), later appeared in a video released in spring 2011, in which a former ISI commander was executed.

No civilian casualties have so far been reported for this strike.