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Pakistani Taliban denies reports of their chief's death: media

Xinhua, March 23, 2015 Adjust font size:

The Pakistani Taliban on Monday rejected reports that their chief may have been killed in air raids in the country's tribal region, said local media.

A vast section of Pakistani media reported that Mullah Fazalullah was in the rugged mountainous Tirah Valley of Khyber Agency when fighter jets pounded positions of the Taliban militants there.

The army has not confirmed the reports. It said Saturday that nearly 100 militants have been killed in the ground and air offensive in recent days. At least seven soldiers also lost their lives in the clashes, the army spokesman Major General Asim Bajwa said.

The offensive codenamed "Kyber-2" has been launched to dislodge the Taliban and another armed group, "Lashkar-e-Islam," from the strategically important Tirah Valley which borders Afghanistan.

Spokesman for the outlawed Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Mohammad Khorasani, denied reports of the killing of their chief.

"All media reports about the death of our chief are completely baseless. We reject all these false claims," Khorasani told the Pakistani media.

Local TV channel "92-News" has issued photographs of dozens of the militants killed in the operation and it reported that one photograph has some resemblance with Fazalullah.

The whereabouts of Fazalullah have been unknown since he fled Swat in 2009 when security forces launched a major offensive and cleared the area of the Taliban.

The army had long been saying that Fazalullah and many other Taliban fighters have crossed the border into Afghanistan in the wake of military operations in the tribal regions.

The TTP chief is blamed for ordering the attack on the army-run school in Peshawar in December last year that had killed around 150 people, the majority of which were children.

Security officials said that the fleeing militants have now gathered in Tirah Valley that is inaccessible due to lack of road infrastructure. The Taliban and other militant groups had been in control of most of the valley.

The security forces have taken control of some of the areas in the recent air raids and ground offensive, official sources said. Endi