Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud is seriously ill with diabetes and may even be in a coma, security officials and militant commanders close to the al-Qaeda-linked warlord said yesterday.
Local television reported that Mehsud, the head of the country’s umbrella Taliban organization, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), had died overnight — but officials and militant sources insisted he was still alive.
The shadowy Mehsud was accused by the previous government and by the CIA of masterminding the slaying of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in December. He has denied any involvement.
“Baitullah is sick. His condition is precarious,” a senior Pakistani security official said on condition of anonymity.
Other officials gave similar accounts of his health.
The father of a woman to whom Mehsud was recently engaged to be married — she would be his second wife — told friends Mehsud was “in a coma,” security officials said.
A senior Taliban commander close to Mehsud confirmed that he was ill but insisted he would pull through.
“He is only suffering from a bout of diabetes. He is under treatment but he will be all right,” commander Rahim Burki said.
Another commander named Razaq said Mehsud “needs medical attention two or three times a week and he is growing weaker.”
Mehsud is based in the lawless South Waziristan tribal area bordering Afghanistan and independent verification of his condition was impossible.
Pakistani officials said that about 80 percent of the more than 70 suicide bombings across the country since July last year were carried out by members of Mehsud’s own tribe.
In related news, Pakistani tribesmen supporting a government assault on Islamist militants near the troubled Afghan frontier have killed 13 Taliban insurgents, officials said yesterday.
The role of the Pashtun tribal fighters in the operation in the volatile Bajaur region has drawn comparisons with the so-called “Sunni Awakening” in Iraq in which tribes fought al-Qaeda militants.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
SPIRITUAL COUPLE: Martha Louise has said she can talk with angels, while her husband, Durek Verrett, claims that he communicates with a broad range of spirits Social media influencers, reality stars and TV personalities were among the guests as the Norwegian king’s eldest child, Princess Martha Louise, married a self-professed US shaman on Saturday in a wedding ceremony following three days of festivities. The 52-year-old Martha Louise and Durek Verrett, who claims to be a sixth-generation shaman from California, tied the knot in the picturesque small town of Geiranger, one of Norway’s major tourist attractions located on a fjord with stunning views. Following festivities that started on Thursday, the actual wedding ceremony took place in a large white tent set up on a lush lawn. Guests
Thailand has netted more than 1.3 million kilograms of highly destructive blackchin tilapia fish, the government said yesterday, as it battles to stamp out the invasive species. Shoals of blackchin tilapia, which can produce up to 500 young at a time, have been found in 19 provinces, damaging ecosystems in rivers, swamps and canals by preying on small fish, shrimp and snail larvae. As well as the ecological impact, the government is worried about the effect on the kingdom’s crucial fish-farming industry. Fishing authorities caught 1,332,000kg of blackchin tilapia from February to Wednesday last week, said Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, vice president of a parliamentary
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious