Top Pakistan Taliban commander killed in Afghanistan
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Pakistan's Taliban says one of its senior commanders was killed in a blast in Afghanistan, and Pakistan's military confirms that four soldiers were killed in a suicide attack.
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Pakistan's Taliban commander Abdul Wali
A senior commander of Pakistan's Taliban movement was killed by a blast in eastern Afghanistan, a militant source told AFP.
Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) said an announcement would be made regarding "the martyrdom of a central leader," but a source told AFP it was Abdul Wali, a notorious commander who used the alias Omar Khalid Khorasani.
His death may bring an end to a shaky indefinite ceasefire the TTP reached with the Pakistan government in June as peace talks mediated by Afghanistan's Taliban progressed.
Pakistan's military confirmed Tuesday that four soldiers were killed in a suicide attack on a military convoy in North Waziristan, where the TTP is prominent, bordering Afghanistan.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif condemned the attack and described it as a cowardly act of terrorism, expressing his confidence in the military establishment and its leaders in the fight against terrorism.
The Pakistan and Afghan Taliban are separate groups but share a common ideology.
The TTP source who asked not to be identified told AFP that Wali and two other commanders were killed when their car was "targeted" in Afghanistan's eastern Paktika province.
"When we reached his vehicle it was on fire, but the nature of the explosion is not yet clear," he indicated, adding that Wali was returning from a meeting with TTP chief Noor Wali Mehsud.
Wali was responsible for bloody attacks
In 2014, Wali formed a separate, more-militant faction of the Taliban known as Jamaat-ul-Ahrar which claimed responsibility for some of the deadliest attacks in the country, including a suicide bomb in Lahore on Easter Sunday in 2016 that killed 75 people.
He was responsible for the 2014 bloody attack on the military school in the city of Peshawar which killed about 149 people, 126 of whom were students.
Wali announced a merger with the TTP two years ago, and this June the umbrella group declared an "indefinite ceasefire" with Islamabad after peace talks brokered by the Afghan Taliban began in Kabul.
The peace talks have angered many in Pakistan, who remember brutal attacks by the TTP -- including on schools, hotels, churches, and markets.
Since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan last year, Islamabad has increasingly complained of attacks by the TTP.
Kabul insists it will not allow Afghan soil to be used by militant groups plotting against its neighbors.
Read more: Pakistan not to recognize Taliban solely
