Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud is seriously ill with diabetes and may even be in a coma, security officials and militant commanders close to the al Qaeda-linked warlord said on Wednesday. Local television reported that Mehsud, the head of the country's umbrella Taliban organisation, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), had died overnight - but officials and militant sources insisted he was still alive.
The shadowy Mehsud was accused by the previous government and by the US Central Intelligence Agency of masterminding the slaying of former premier Benazir Bhutto in December 2007. He has denied any involvement. "Baitullah is sick. His condition is precarious," a senior Pakistani security official told AFP on condition of anonymity. Other officials gave similar accounts of his health.
The father of a woman to whom Mehsud was recently engaged to be married - she would be his second wife - told friends Mehsud was "in a coma," security officials said. A senior Taliban commander close to Mehsud confirmed that he was ill but insisted he would pull through. "He is only suffering from a bout of diabetes. He is under treatment but he will be all right," commander Rahim Burki told AFP.
Another commander said Mehsud required frequent medical care. "Baitullah needs medical attention two or three times a week and he is growing weaker," the commander, named Razaq, told AFP. Mehsud is based in the lawless South Waziristan tribal area bordering Afghanistan and independent verification of his condition was impossible.
Pakistani officials said that about 80 percent of the more than 70 suicide bombings across the country since July 2007 were carried out by the members of Mehsud's own tribe. The Taliban group he heads is influential in South and North Waziristan and also in the tribal region of Bajaur, where Pakistani forces launched a major anti-militant offensive in early August.
But a battle to succeed Mehsud has already started in the TTP, security officials said. A leading Taliban commander called Qari Hussain - who styles himself Zarqawi after the slain Jordanian leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - was lobbying to take over in case he dies, officials said. He faces opposition from two other top militants, Bajaur-based Faqir Hussain and a commander named Abdul Wali Khan.
Any succession struggle could be good for the Pakistani government, which has been trying to fan divisions between Mehsud's group and other Taliban warlords in South Waziristan. One of them, Mullah Nazir, who has refused to join the TTP, led a government-backed operation against central Asian al Qaeda militants in South Waziristan in March 2007.