Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
July 13, 2016
Pakistan’s military says that the mastermind of a 2014 attack on a Pakistani school that killed about 150 people, mainly children, has been killed by a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan.
Pakistani Army spokesman Lieutenant General Asim Bajwa said on July 13 that a U.S. Army general had confirmed the death of Taliban leader Khalifa Umar Mansoor in a phone call to Pakistan’s army chief, General Raheel Sharif.
The Pentagon on July 13 confirmed the report, saying Mansoor was killed on July 9 by an air strike in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Nangarhar along with four other militants.
Mansoor, also known as Umar Naray and Khalid Khurasani, had claimed responsibility for training and dispatching a Taliban suicide squad to the school in Peshawar.
The attack killed about 150 people, 144 of them children.
Mansoor also planned an attack on a university in northwestern Pakistan earlier in 2016 that killed 21 students and teachers.
Based on reporting by AP, Reuters, and Dawn
Copyright (c) 2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036.
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