KABUL (AFP) - NATO said Wednesday that an airstrike had killed a Taliban shadow governor who took orders from a commander based in Pakistan. The US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said Qari Ziauddin was killed on Tuesday, describing him as Taliban shadow governor in the northwestern province of Faryab. The Taliban, the militia leading a nine-year insurgency aiming to bring down the Western-backed Afghan government and evict more than 152,000 foreign troops, operate shadow administrations in all the countrys 34 provinces. The shadow governor was directly associated with and took direct operational orders from a Pakistan-based leader, ISAF said in a statement. Intelligence tracked him to a remote area of Dawlat Abad district, where after careful planning to ensure no civilians were present it said coalition aircraft carried out an airstrike against the Taliban insurgent. In a subsequent shootout, NATO said ground troops killed four insurgents and confirmed that Ziauddin died during the airstrike. NATO said security forces found weapons and ammunition in a series of caves, but that large secondary explosions prevented troops from assessing contents of a weapons cache.