{"id":27690,"date":"2016-08-13T02:21:03","date_gmt":"2016-08-13T02:21:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/afghan-isil-s-hafiz-saeed-khan-killed-in-us\/"},"modified":"2016-08-13T02:20:46","modified_gmt":"2016-08-13T02:20:46","slug":"afghan-isil-s-hafiz-saeed-khan-killed-in-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/afghan-isil-s-hafiz-saeed-khan-killed-in-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Afghan ISIL’s Hafiz Saeed Khan killed in US strike"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Afghan ambassador to Pakistan says Hafiz Saeed and his associates were killed on July 26 in Nangharhar province.}<\/p>\n

The leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group in Afghanistan and Pakistan was killed in a US drone strike on July 26, US and Afghan officials have confirmed.<\/p>\n

Hafiz Saeed Khan, ISIL’s Khorasan Province leader, was killed in Kot district of Afghanistan’s Nangharhar province, according to Hazrat Omar Zakhilwal, the top Afghan diplomat in Pakistan. <\/p>\n

He told Reuters news agency on Friday that Saeed’s senior commanders and fighters were also killed in the drone strike. <\/p>\n

A US defence official confirmed to Reuters that the July 26 drone strike killed Saeed. <\/p>\n

The so-called Khorasan Province was created by ISIL, also known as ISIS, in 2015 encompassing areas in Pakistan, Afghanistan and parts of Central Asia.<\/p>\n

Al Jazeera’s Jennifer Glasse, reporting from Kabul on Saturday, said the drone strike was part of a wider operation against ISIL in Nangarhar that has killed nearly 300 fighters, including some of the group’s leadership.<\/p>\n

“The commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan General John W Nicholson estimates that about 25 percent of the ISIL fighters in Afghanistan have been killed in the drone strikes.<\/p>\n

“He said the killing of Hafiz Saeed Khan will disrupt ISIL recruitment as well as operations.”<\/p>\n

The air strike occurred during a month-long joint US-Afghan military operation in July against ISIL in Nangarhar.<\/p>\n

The air strike was carried out with Khan as the target, according to the Pentagon.<\/p>\n

“Khan was known to directly participate in attacks against US and coalition forces, and the actions of his network terrorised Afghans, especially in Nangarhar,” said Gordon Trowbridge, Pentagon spokesperson.<\/p>\n

Saeed, a former member of the Pakistani branch of the Taliban [known as Tehreek-e-Taliban] who swore allegiance to ISIL, had been reported killed last year, but his death was never confirmed.<\/p>\n

{{Rifts and rivalry }} <\/p>\n

The Taliban’s various factions in Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as their al-Qaeda allies are bitter rivals of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ISIL chief.<\/p>\n

The Taliban rejects Baghdadi’s proclamation of himself as the leader of an envisioned worldwide caliphate.<\/p>\n

In Afghanistan, Taliban and ISIL fighters have battled over territory in Nangarhar, though both have recently been more busy defending against US and Afghan assaults.<\/p>\n

Some Afghan Taliban members have defected to ISIL, with fighters apparently adopting the group’s black flag to rebrand themselves as a more lethal force.<\/p>\n

ISIL has been largely confined to a handful of districts in Nangarhar, which borders Pakistan, where ISIL fighters – mostly defectors from the Taliban – are blamed for raids on villages and government outposts.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, fears that ISIL might be expanding its operational reach arose this week when the group took credit for an attack on a Pakistani hospital that killed at least 70 people in the southwestern city of Quetta.<\/p>\n

A Pakistani Taliban faction also claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing.<\/p>\n

A few weeks earlier, ISIL claimed responsibility for an attack on a rally in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, which killed more than 80 people.<\/p>\n

\"File<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Afghan ambassador to Pakistan says Hafiz Saeed and his associates were killed on July 26 in Nangharhar province.} The leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group in Afghanistan and Pakistan was killed in a US drone strike on July 26, US and Afghan officials have confirmed. Hafiz Saeed Khan, ISIL’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-27690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27690\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27690"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=27690"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=27690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}