Pakistani Taliban

Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Peshawar, Pakistan -- Faced with the prospect of rifts among its ranks after a U.S. drone strike killed leader Baitullah Mahsud, the Pakistani Taliban announced today that it had chosen one of his deputies to succeed him. A 28-year-old commander named Hakimullah Mahsud will lead Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, a militant organization based in the tribal areas along the Afghan border and blamed for many of...

An apparent U.S. drone strike early Thursday in northwest Pakistan killed a top Pakistani Taliban commander also serving as a key Al Qaeda operative, local officials said. The death of Badar Mansoor, 35, comes as the United States steps up its pace of drone missile attacks following a six-week hiatus after an airstrike accidentally killed Pakistani soldiers near the Afghan border in November. Thursday's predawn strike occurred in North Waziristan, the volatile tribal region that serves as a sanctuary for several militant groups, including the Pakistani Taliban and the wing of the Afghan Taliban known as the Haqqani network.

The 14-year-old boy with acne dotting his chin yanked down the scarf concealing his face and recounted his 12 days in a Taliban training camp -- starting with the day six masked militants kidnapped him as he picked onions on a farm in the Swat Valley. They blindfolded him and brought him to an abandoned girls' school, he said, where he and scores of other Pakistani boys ran hills for 2 1/2 hours every day and listened to Taliban trainers extol the glory of waging holy war against the Pakistani army.

Islamist militants on Thursday claimed responsibility for killing 15 Pakistani paramilitary troops this week, dealing a serious setback to the prospect of peace talks between Islamabad and the country's homegrown insurgency. The bodies of the men, abducted in December from a fort near the Afghan border, were found in the village of Shewa in North Waziristan, a tribal region that serves as a stronghold for several Pakistani and Afghan insurgent groups, local officials said. The victims were members of the Frontier Constabulary, which patrols the volatile tribal districts along the border.

The U.S. citizen who attempted to set off a car bomb in New York's Times Square on May 1 was trained and funded by a Pakistani militant group that works closely with Al Qaeda to plot attacks against the U.S., top Obama administration officials said Sunday. "We've now developed evidence that shows that the Pakistani Taliban was behind the attack," Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. said on ABC's "This Week." "We know that they helped facilitate it. We know that they probably helped finance it. And that he was working at their direction."

The main suspect in the attempted Times Square bombing received several days of training in Pakistan's Mohmand region and roughly $15,000 from the Pakistani Taliban to finance the attack, according to U.S. officials briefed on the case. It appears likely that Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistani American accused of leaving a Nissan Pathfinder loaded with fertilizer and propane tanks in Times Square on May 1, came up with the idea of the car bomb himself, one official said. Shahzad then apparently persuaded the militant group to give him assistance when he traveled to Pakistan's border region in 2009 or early 2010, they said.

Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Peshawar, Pakistan -- A would-be successor to Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mahsud was reportedly killed today in a gun battle between rival factions of the militant group, in a sign that rifts are surfacing in the wake of his death from a U.S. missile strike. Hakimullah Mahsud, regarded as a leading candidate to replace Baitullah Mahsud, was shot and killed in the exchange of gunfire, said intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Taliban militants reeling from American and Pakistani attacks launched a sophisticated raid on the heavily guarded U.S. Consulate in Peshawar on Monday, killing at least five security personnel in suicide bomb blasts and barrages of grenades and automatic gunfire. The midday attack failed to penetrate the facility in the volatile city near the Afghan border, and none of the staff members were injured or killed. The consulate is instrumental in channeling millions of dollars in U.S. aid into Pakistan's impoverished tribal areas and the Swat Valley region, part of Washington's long-term strategy aimed at eliminating support for the Taliban.

A suicide bomb attack killed four people Wednesday in the northwest Pakistan city of Peshawar, including a top national police official who appeared to be the target of the blast. Sifwat Ghayoor, commander of a paramilitary police force called the Frontier Constabulary, was killed when a lone suicide bomber approached his car on foot at a traffic light and detonated explosives, authorities in Peshawar said. Two of Ghayoor's bodyguards and a passerby were also killed. Eleven people were injured.

Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square bomber, grew up in a Pakistani family whose circle of acquaintances included two future militants — a Taliban leader and one of the participants in the 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai, India, a government source said Friday. Officials now believe this family background may help explain why Shahzad, after immigrating to the United States, grew radicalized and allegedly contacted the Pakistani Taliban via the Internet. The group would have welcomed him because as a naturalized U.S. citizen, he could easily travel to and from Pakistan.

Leaders of the Pakistani Taliban have begun preliminary talks with intermediaries of the government aimed at reaching a peace agreement in the tribal region of South Waziristan, the site of a large-scale military operation against the homegrown insurgency in 2009. Sources close to the Pakistani Taliban confirmed that talks were underway, adding that the discussions were at an early stage. The intermediaries include tribal elders in South Waziristan, the militant group's stronghold.

  Every time Pakistan hammered out peace agreements with militants, the results were disastrous. The groups grew stronger, and the toll their bomb blasts took on civilians steadily rose. That history explains why anxiety is rippling through the country as talk builds of the prospect for peace negotiations with the Pakistani Taliban, the homegrown insurgency responsible for most of the suicide bombings and terrorist strikes that have killed thousands of people in recent years.

Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan Gunmen kidnapped an American from his house in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore on Saturday, an attack that underscores the risk U.S. citizens and other foreigners face in a country that has been grappling with Islamic militants. A U.S. Embassy spokesman identified the man as Warren Weinstein but would not give details about his background or the abduction. The name matches the LinkedIn profile of a man who works as the Pakistan country director for J.E. Austin Associates, a consulting firm for development projects in Pakistan and a host of other countries.

An attack by militants on a checkpoint in a lawless tribal area near the Afghan border early Thursday underscores how overstretched the Pakistani military is and why it is resisting U.S. pressure to conduct a massive offensive in North Waziristan, analysts said Thursday. About 100 insurgents stormed the checkpoint in the environs of Marobi village in South Waziristan with rockets and machine guns, sparking a three-hour gunfight that killed eight soldiers and wounded 12 others. Local officials said 10 militants were also killed and five wounded in the battle, figures disputed by a spokesman for the outlawed Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan group who said none of its fighters were killed and that two had received bullet wounds.

It was all a ruse, Ejaz Ahmad sniffed. Osama bin Laden never lived in Abbottabad. To Ahmad, the secret night raid by U.S. commandos, the staccato bursts of gunfire, the crash of the stealth helicopter and the reported killing of the Al Qaeda leader in a whitewashed compound just down the road were pure theater. The Americans made it all up to convince the world that terrorism exists everywhere in Pakistan. "Then they'll come in and take control of our nuclear weapons," the 20-year-old college student said as he walked along a dirt path near the compound.

The team of Islamist militants knew exactly where the naval base's weak spot was. Dressed in black and armed with AK-47 rifles, grenades and rocket launchers, they crept up to the back wall of Mehran Naval Station in Karachi, keeping clear of security cameras. Then, with just a pair of ladders, they clambered over the wall, cutting through barbed wire at the top, to launch a 17-hour siege that would renew disturbing questions about the Pakistani military's ability to defend sensitive installations, including its nuclear arsenal.

A car bomb blast targeted two U.S. consulate vehicles in the northwest city of Peshawar on Friday, killing a Pakistani bystander and slightly injuring Americans inside the cars. Pakistani police officials said the car, a parked Suzuki filled with 110 pounds of explosives, was detonated by remote control. U.S. Embassy spokesman Alberto Rodriguez said the explosion damaged one of the two armored vehicles. The two-car convoy, headed from Peshawar's University Town neighborhood to the consulate, was not carrying any high-ranking officials.