Obama confirms senior Taliban leader killed in US air strike

President Barack Obama confirmed the news of Mullah Akhtar Mansour’s death on Monday, saying that this was an ‘important milestone’ in efforts to bring peace to Afghanistan.

Mansour was reportedly killed on Sunday when a US missile hit his vehicle which was cited in Balochistan.

“We have removed the leader of an organisation that has continued to plot against and unleash attacks on American and Coalition forces, to wage war against the Afghan people, and align itself with extremist groups like Al Qaeda,” the US president said in a statement.

While delivering the news of Manour’s death, President Obama also hinted that that US will continue to go after threats on Pakistani soil. “We will work on shared objectives with Pakistan, where terrorists that threaten all our nations must be denied safe haven,” he said.

Obama further clarified that the reason Mansour was targeted like this is that he had rejected efforts to engage in peace talks and instead resorted to violence, endangering lives of innocent people.

The president further urged the remaining Taliban leadership to resort to peaceful talks, as the only ‘real path’ to end the conflict.

According to reports, this is the first time ever that such a senior Taliban official has been attacked on Pakistani soil. Pakistan has registered its protest over this as according to reports, the government was only informed of this attack on the Pakistani soil after it had taken place.

Mansour was selected as the leadership of Taliban in 2015, after reports of Mullah Omar’s death was made public.

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Posted by fatimaarshad on May 23 2016. Filed under Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.