Kabul:
Khalid Batli alias Mohammad Khurasani, a
senior leader
of the
Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), has been killed in the eastern
Afghanistan
province of
Nangarhar.
According to an ANI report, Khalid Balti had been making efforts for uniting various TTP factions and planning terrorist attacks along with TTP chief Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud.
The TTP leader had recently hinted at carrying out terrorist attacks inside Pakistan, according to Dawn.
The incident assumes significance as the Afghan Taliban backs the TTP, a
group
which has been proscribed in Pakistan.
The
Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has been behind several terror attacks in Pakistan including the Peshawar Army School attack which killed over a hundred children in 2014.
However, a spokesman for the Taliban government of Afghanistan denied the killing of the senior TTP member and said that no such incident had taken place.
“I do not confirm these reports. They are not true. No such incident has taken place on this (Afghan) side,” Afghan government spokesperson Bilal Karimi told Dawn when asked for a comment on Balti’s killing.
Khalid Balti hails from Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan region and had been an operational commander of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) for the past several years.
Further, in 2007, Balti joined the banned Tehreek Nifaz Shariat-i-Muhammadi in Swat and established close ties with Mullah Fazlullah, a former head of the TTP. He had cordial and close relations with TTP members of all tiers, according to Dawn.
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