Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Taliban assassination exposes fissures

Taliban on taliban violence. Miami Herald

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- One of his own guards shot and killed the leading challenger to Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud on Tuesday, dealing a major blow to the Pakistani's government's efforts to crush an Islamic insurgency.

Qari Zainuddin, 30, a member of the Taliban leader's Mehsud tribe, was shot as he slept at his headquarters Tuesday morning in Dera Ismail Khan, a town on the edge of the extremist-controlled South Waziristan region, according to Baaz Muhammad, a follower of Zainuddin who was with him when he was shot and wounded in the attack.[...]

In an interview with McClatchy earlier this month, Zainuddin vowed to foment a tribal uprising against Mehsud, who's affiliated with al Qaeda, and said he'd already gathered 3,000 armed supporters to fight him.

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