PESHAWAR, Pakistan - A senior Afghan Taliban commander linked to the kidnapping of U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl was killed on Friday by a suspected U.S. drone strike along with six other militant commanders, sources said.
Maulvi Sangeen Zadran, who was part of the Haqqani network, was killed in Pakistan's ethnic Pashtun tribal region on the Afghan border.
The United States placed Zadran, 45, on its list of global terrorists in 2011, Reuters reported. He was accused of planning bomb attacks and assaults on U.S. bases in eastern Afghanistan, planning movements of foreign Taliban fighters and orchestrating kidnappings of Afghan and foreign nationals in border areas.
He was reportedly staying at a house at Dargah Mandi village near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border in North Waziristan when he came under drone attack.
Taliban and tribal sources in Miranshah, the main administrative town of North Waziristan, said that the six other militants killed in the strike included three there Jordanians and an Egyptian.
“The announcements were made from loudspeakers in the mosques here in Miranshah in the morning and tribesmen were asked to attend funeral prayers of the slain militants,” said local tribesman Hashmat Dawar.
The Haqqani network is yet to confirm or deny the loss of its militants in the drone strike.
Sgt. Bergdahl, captured in 2009, is the only American soldier being held by militants.
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