{"id":133602,"date":"2015-07-11T17:00:25","date_gmt":"2015-07-11T17:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=133602"},"modified":"2015-07-11T15:07:37","modified_gmt":"2015-07-11T15:07:37","slug":"islamic-state-leader-in-afghanistan-killed-by-drone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=133602","title":{"rendered":"Islamic State leader in Afghanistan &#8216;killed by drone&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">Hafiz Saeed, the leader of the Islamic State group in the Afghanistan and Pakistan region, has been killed in a drone strike, the Afghan intelligence agency says.<\/p>\n<p>Saeed was killed in the strike in Achin in Afghanistan&#8217;s eastern Nangarhar province on Friday night, it said.<\/p>\n<p>Some 30 other IS militants were killed, the agency said. There has been no independent verification.<\/p>\n<p>A drone strike on Tuesday reportedly killed another top IS figure.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape body-width no-caption\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"js-image-replace\" src=\"http:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/624\/cpsprodpb\/C3EE\/production\/_84185105_achin_afghanistan.png\" alt=\"null\" width=\"464\" height=\"261\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>The Afghan intelligence agency, the NDS, said Friday&#8217;s strike was carried out by US-led coalition forces in coordination with intelligence provided by the spy agency.<\/p>\n<p>Nato forces have had a new mandate since the start of the year but can still carry out drone strikes.<\/p>\n<p>There has been no response from Islamic State on the reports and the Afghan government has given no official confirmation.<\/p>\n<p>There had been reports in April that Saeed, also referred to as Hafiz Saeed Khan, was killed while planting a bomb.<\/p>\n<p>Nangarhar&#8217;s Achin district is close to the border with Pakistan. The Islamic State group refers to the Afghanistan-Pakistan region as Khorasan state.<\/p>\n<p>Nangarhar has seen an upsurge of fighting in recent weeks, mostly between IS and the Taliban, forcing thousands of people to flee their homes.<\/p>\n<p>The province is one of the areas where IS militants are most active in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape full-width has-caption\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"js-image-replace\" src=\"http:\/\/ichef-1.bbci.co.uk\/news\/624\/cpsprodpb\/1D2B\/production\/_84176470_84176469.jpg\" alt=\"null\" width=\"629\" height=\"354\" \/><figcaption class=\"media-caption\"><span class=\"media-caption__text\">Shahidullah Shahid was reportedly killed in another drone strike on Tuesday<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Tuesday&#8217;s strike reportedly killed Shahidullah Shahid, a former member of the Pakistani Taliban who defected to the IS group.<\/p>\n<p>Again, there has been no independent confirmation of his death.<\/p>\n<p>He was the most prominent of a group of fighters who appeared in a video in January, apparently filmed in Pakistan, pledging allegiance to the self-styled Islamic State.<\/p>\n<p>Tuesday&#8217;s strike also killed another senior IS commander and scores of militants, intelligence officials say.<\/p>\n<p>Another IS militant commander, Mullah Abdul Rauf, was reported killed in a drone strike in February.<\/p>\n<p>The NDS recently released a video on Facebook showing how its special forces were fighting against the IS threat.<\/p>\n<p>IS first made its presence felt in Pakistan in April, when its regional spokesman claimed its fighters had shot dead three Pakistani soldiers.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hafiz Saeed, the leader of the Islamic State group in the Afghanistan and Pakistan region, has been killed in a drone strike, the Afghan intelligence agency says. Saeed was killed in the strike in Achin in Afghanistan&#8217;s eastern Nangarhar province on Friday night, it said. Some 30 other IS militants were killed, the agency said. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":133603,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-133602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=133602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/133603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=133602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=133602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=133602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}