Hafiz Saeed Khan, chief of the Islamic State (IS) militant group in Af-Pak region, was killed in a U.S. drone strike in eastern Afghanistan, three days after another top leader of the terror outfit died in a similar American air assault, a media report said on Saturday.
Khan — a former Pakistani Taliban commander who hailed from Pakistan’s tribal region — was killed in the drone strike in Nangarhar district. Khan was in January appointed the chief of the radical Iraq-and-Syria- based outfit in Afghanistan and Pakistan, an area they call Khorasan.
“Daesh No. 1 in Afghanistan, Hafiz Saeed Khan, was killed in a drone strike in Nangarhar,” a source at the National Directorate of Security (NDS) was quoted as saying by Tolo newswire. This is not the first time Khan has been reported killed.
Claim not confirmedThe claim was not confirmed by independent sources or from the IS, also known as Daesh in Arabic. He was the second top rebel killed in drone strikes in three days.
On Thursday, senior IS leader and former Pakistani Taliban spokesman Shahidullah Shahid was killed in a U.S. drone attack in Afghanistan.
Shahid, also known as Sheikh Maqbool Orakzai, hailed from Pakistan’s Orakzai tribal region and was wanted in several cases of terrorism.
Khan and Shahid parted ways with the Pakistani Taliban last year with five other rebels, and announced their allegiance to the IS in October.
IS rebels are active in eastern provinces of Afghanistan, where they had a bloody clash with the Afghan Taliban last month.
