A US air strike has killed a wife of the Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, delivering a message to the notorious militant commander that western and Pakistani pursuers are closing in on him.
Two missiles from an unmanned drone plane struck a house near Makeen in South Waziristan, a Mehsud stronghold near the Afghan border, last night, killing at least two people and wounding several others.
Tribesmen told local reporters that the house belonged to Ikramuddin Mehsud, a cleric whose daughter married Mehsud last year. The body of the woman, whose was not named, was pulled from the rubble this morning.
Mehsud was not thought to have been present at the house during the strike. Islam allows a man to take four wives.
Two senior Pakistani officials – one with the army, the other with intelligence – confirmed the strike but cautioned that the identities of those killed were still being confirmed. "There are two casualties but the death of the wife is not yet confirmed," said one.
The US embassy in Islamabad, which does not officially acknowledge the CIA-coordinated assassination scheme, made no comment.
The strike coincides with much-heralded plans for a Pakistani assault on Mehsud's South Waziristan bastion. But after six weeks of troop deployments and attacks on militants in neighbouring districts, the offensive is on hold. Pakistani officers say they must first complete operations in Swat, where after almost three months of combat pockets of Taliban resistance are holding out, even as displaced people flood back into the area.
A bloody surge in nearby Afghanistan is also a factor: one general said many of Mehsud's fighters had crossed into Helmand, where battle is raging with British and American troops.
Mehsud has become Pakistan's public enemy number one for a slew of suicide attacks that have killed hundreds of soldiers and civilians. He denies CIA allegations of orchestrating the assassination of the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto in December 2007.
In recent months the US has offered a $5m bounty for his death or capture and targeted his network through drone strikes. It was not clear, however, whether the latest bombing deliberately targeted his wife or represented a missed strike against the leader himself.
It could fuel opposition to the drones inside Pakistan. Many Pakistanis resent the attacks as a breach of sovereignty, and westerners agree the death toll is too high. In May the US military adviser David Kilcullen said drones had killed 14 mid- or lower-level al-Qaida leaders since 2006, but also 700 civilians.
"That's a hit rate of 2% on 98% collateral. It's not moral," he told the Financial Times.
President Asif Ali Zardari's government vehemently criticises the strikes in public, but privately helps US intelligence to co-ordinate and execute them. Some of the CIA-operated drones take off from a remote airstrip in western Baluchistan province but are remotely piloted from a US air force base in the Nevada desert.
In North and South Waziristan, where most of the missiles land, the Taliban have executed alleged US spies for planting small electronic homing devices that guide the missiles towards their targets.
