The notorious leader of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Mullah Fazlullah, was killed in an air strike in Afghanistan on Dec. 19.
Fazlullah masterminded many ruthless, vicious and brutal attacks including the massacre of 151 innocent teachers & students mostly school children.
Officials said that high level intelligence sharing entitled the forces to target the most wanted man.
According to well placed sources, Fazlullah was killed during a joint operation by Pakistani Army and U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan. Till today, no official statement was issued. However, a top source also shared that the news about Fazlullah's execution would be officially announced after taking precautionary security measures.
Schools in Pakistan will remain closed for three more weeks.
The joint operation to eliminate Fazlullah was conducted after Pakistan Army Chief General Raheel Sharif rushed to Afghanistan, the next day after the Peshawar school massacre on Dec. 16, for emergency discussions with the Afghan President, Ashraf Ghani, and the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, U.S. Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford.
General Sharif demanded that the Afghan government take serious action against TTP's most-feared leader hiding inside the Afghan boarder without any delay. The Army Chief shared intelligence details with the Afghan officials which proved Fazlullah was issuing orders to terrorists from his sanctuary in Afghanistan.
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was informed about the joint secret operation but only afterwards.
The army has been involved in a major war to eradicate Taliban and other terrorist hideouts in the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) along the Pakistan-Afghan border in the last year.
The vicious attack on the military-run school in Peshawar was the aftermath and deadly wrath of Taliban on the successful visit of General Sharif to Washington.
Fazlullah — aka Mullah Radio for reaching out to his terrorist network through his own FM radio — had turned his tail from Swat when the military flushed out terrorists from the valley during a massive military operation in 2009. He had also claimed responsibility for an assassination attempt in 2012 on Malala Yousafzai, the 2014 Nobel laureate.
Since the Peshawar school massacre, Pakistan Army has killed over 90 most wanted terrorists and militants in the northwest near the Afghan border in intensified fighting. Top sources also said suicide attackers who assaulted the Pakistani school were given orders by phone to await the arrival of soldiers after they had initially slaughtered around 100 children in the school's hall. The final toll of innocent lives brutally assassinated is 151.
Telephone intercepts revealed that a Pakistani Taliban gunman asked his handlers ''what else do we do now?'' after informing them that ''we have killed all the children in the auditorium and now going outside.''
He was told to ''wait for the army people to come, kill them before blowing yourself up.''
The school's auditorium, where pupils had assembled for a lecture on first aid, was the scene of the worst carnage during the more than seven-hour rampage by at least six attackers. Witnesses said the attackers sprayed the hall indiscriminately with gunfire after bursting in on pupils and staff. The phone calls were probably a key part of the intelligence shared by the Pakistani Army Chief, General Raheel Sharif, when he rushed to Kabul very next day. The intercepted phone calls were traced to Afghan numbers, underlining the deadly overlaps between the Islamist insurgencies in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Earlier in the year, Pakistan repeatedly blamed attacks inside its borders on the fact that the leadership of the TTP, in particular its top leader Mullah Fazlullah, had found refuge in Afghanistan.
Also, The infamous Red Mosque is about to face a final round with the Army. in 2007, the army killed 84 terrorists inside the mosque in the heart of Islamabad.
The Red Mosque recently published a video online, from Osama Bin Laden Library established inside the mosque, in which they pledged allegiance to the Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Terrorists overwhelmingly believe that IS is the true model for the Islamic Caliphate.
Moreover, General Sharif, now with full support from the U.S. will do much more to eradicate all faces of terror including those who are backing terror so far. Army Courts are coming in to action soon, as part of legislation in Pakistan, to hang all terrorists once and for all.
Dr. Ammar Turabi is a certified foreign and domestic policy consultant from Pakistan. All views expressed above are his own.
