See that handsome devil above? You won’t see him no more. At least that’s what the Pentagon is hoping for. Mullah Akhtar Mansour is/was the leader of the Taliban, but the United States carried out a drone strike on Saturday that officials believe killed the head of the deadly terrorist organization.
The drone attack, which was authorized by President Barack Obama, took place in a remote area of Pakistan near the border of Afghanistan. Around 3 p.m. Pakistan time, the strike was carried out by multiple unmanned aircraft operated by U.S. Special Operations forces. Mansour was the target of the strike, and a second adult male combatant traveling with him in a vehicle was also likely killed. There was no collateral damage, an official said. A senior administration official said it would take days to get “physical confirmation” because of the remote location.
“Mansour has been the leader of the Taliban and actively involved with planning attacks against facilities in Kabul and across Afghanistan, presenting a threat to Afghan civilians and security forces, our personnel, and coalition partners,” Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said in the statement. “Mansour has been an obstacle to peace and reconciliation between the government of Afghanistan and the Taliban, prohibiting Taliban leaders from participating in peace talks with the Afghan government that could lead to an end to the conflict.”
https://twitter.com/PentagonPresSec/status/734120502348767232
Remember the Taliban? They were that really, really odious group in Afghanistan that was waging jihad and fucking shit up? Then ISIS came along and took away their swagger by carrying out even more monstrous atrocities like killing people with nitric acid, killing people by beheading them, killing people by putting them in cages in pools, killing people by having boulders crush their heads and killing people by attaching bombs to their heads.
Mansour was elected to leader of the Ṭaliban on July 29, 2015. In 2015, about 16,000 members of Afghanistan’s army and police forces were killed or wounded during fighting Taliban insurgency, up from about 12,500 casualties in 2014.
[CNN]
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