LASHKAR GAH/KABUL - A missile-firing drone killed at least six in Afghanistan on Monday including a veteran militant believed to have defected to Islamic State (IS) from the Taliban, Afghan officials said.
The senior militant, former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mullah Abdul Rauf, was killed in violence-plagued Helmand as they drove in a car through Kajaki district, officials in the southern province told Reuters.
Provincial police chief Nabi Jan Mullahkhel said Rauf was travelling in a car when the drone attacked. The other casualties included his brother-in-law and four Pakistanis, Mullahkhel said. Some other officials said Rauf’s son-in-law was also among the dead.
While Helmand officials said six people had been killed, the US army said coalition forces used a “precision, guided munition” to kill eight people who were considered a threat. “We are working to confirm the identities of those killed in the strike,” said a spokesman, Colonel Brian Tribus. He declined to say if the missile was launched by a drone. It was not immediately clear why there was a discrepancy between the death toll given by Nato and Afghan officials.
Rauf has been influential in Afghanistan’s jihadi movement for well over a decade. A US military report released by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks in 2011 said that Rauf had tried to pass himself off as a low level Taliban worker who “delivered bread,” but that interrogators suspected he was more senior.
Also in 2011, Newsweek magazine reported that Rauf had once led an elite fighting force close to Taliban leader Mullah Omar, and that after his return to Afghanistan in 2007 he had become the Taliban’s shadow governor in Uruzgan province. Guantanamo interrogators said Rauf had revealed detailed knowledge of Afghanistan’s opium trade.
Local sources in Helmand said Khadim, who returned to Afghanistan after being released from Guantanamo Bay in 2007, recently switched his fighters’ allegiance to IS. Media reports last month said he had begun recruiting for Islamic State, part of a push by the movement to gain traction beyond its stronghold in Iraq and Syria.
A Pakistani militant commander told AFP Khadim had been a key liaison between various factions which have broken away from the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban movements in recent months. But a senior Taliban commander told AFP that Khadim had “not formally joined IS and IS had not recognised him”. However, Afghanistan’s main intelligence agency - the National Directorate of Security (NDS) - said in a statement Rauf was in charge of IS in southwestern Afghanistan and he was killed just after mid-day in “a successful military operation”. Locals say Khadim’s men, numbering around 300, were often in conflict with Taliban officials in Helmand. “He had deep differences with the Taliban (leadership), which had recently sent a delegation to bury the hatchet, but he was killed before this was settled,” a Taliban commander told AFP. Islamic State last month announced it was expanding into Khorasan, a term Islamists use to describe a region encompassing Afghanistan and Pakistan, and declared a former commander from the Pakistani wing of the Taliban “governor” of the region.
Although there is little evidence of operational ties between IS and the Taliban, a number of militants have pledged allegiance to IS, apparently drawn by its successes in the Middle East. Helmand’s deputy governor, Mohammad Jan Rasulyar, said Rauf’s membership of IS could not be confirmed but his associates were dressed in black outfits often worn by IS members. Australia’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop warned last week of the dangers of IS jihadists expanding operations to Afghanistan, even though there was little evidence of a presence there now.
Afghan forces kill 9 militants
On the other hand, at least nine Taliban militants were killed and four others wounded following counter-terrorism operations conducted jointly by Afghan national security forces. The Ministry of Interior (MoI) following a statement said the operations were conducted in the past 24 hours in Nangarhar, Kandahar, Uruzgan, Ghazni and Paktika provinces.
The statement further added Afghan National Police conducted the anti-terrorism joint operations with Afghan National Army and National Directorate of Security (NDS) to clean some of the areas from terrorists and enemies of peace and stability of Afghanistan.
At least two militants were arrested by Afghan National Security Forces, MoI said, adding that Afghan National Police discovered and confiscated light and heavy rounds ammunition during the operations. “During the same 24 hour period, Afghan National Police discovered and defused 26 different types of IEDs placed by enemies of Afghanistan for destructive activities in Kandahar and Ghazni provinces,” the statement added.



 The anti-government armed militant groups have not commented regarding the report so far.