Targeting Senior Taliban Leader On Afghanistan-Pakistan Border, Drone Missile Fails To Explode

Ilustrasi drone. (Wikimedia Commons/Fg Off Owen Cheverton)

JAKARTA - A missile launched from a drone hit a house located on Afghanistan's border with Pakistan, allegedly targeting a senior Taliban leader, failing to explode according to Pakistani Taliban sources.

A Taliban official said the drone fired missiles at the hujra, or guest house in the compound of Maulvi Faqir Mohammad, a senior leader of Pakistan's Tehrik-e Taliban (TTP) movement.

"Around 3.30 am suddenly a drone appeared in the sky. We were worried and advised Maulvi Faqir to go to a safe place, but he refused and thought it was impossible to hide during the day," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing Reuters. December 17th.

About half an hour later, when Faqir Mohammad was leaving his own house to visit the guesthouse, the missile struck.

"He was about 3 meters from the hujra room, when the drone fired a missile and hit the same room. Luckily the missile didn't explode, he and other people around him remained safe," the source said.

Faqir Mohammad is a former deputy leader of the TTP who spent eight years in Afghanistan's Bagram prison before being released by the Afghan Taliban, following the overthrow of the Western-backed government in Kabul on August 15.

An apparent attempt to kill him in a drone strike came after talks to agree a permanent ceasefire between the TTP and the Pakistani government broke down last week. Initially, the militant movement refused to extend the ceasefire by 30 days.

The TTP, which has fought for years to topple the government in Islamabad, is a separate movement from the Afghan Taliban. But TTP fighters and senior leaders have long been known to take refuge in Afghanistan's lawless eastern border region.