© ReutersThe targeted commander, Mullah Dadullah, right, of the Pakistani Taliban, in September 2011.
Islamabad, Pakistan - NATO forces said on Saturday that they had killed a senior Pakistani Taliban commander in an airstrike in Afghanistan, highlighting the increasingly complicated nature of the fight against Islamist militants along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Mullah Dadullah, who led the Pakistani Taliban in the Bajaur tribal agency, was killed late Friday in a strike on a compound across the border in the Afghan province of Kunar, NATO and Pakistani intelligence officials said.
The Kunar police chief, Gen. Elwaz Mohammad Naziri, said 12 other militants, including Mullah Dadullah's deputy, were also killed.
The death of Mullah Dadullah, a former prayer leader who rose through the Taliban ranks to become a commander, will have an impact on the fighting in Bajaur, where the Pakistani Army has been battling the Pakistani Taliban since 2008.
But it may also offer an opportunity for a fresh turn in the relations among NATO, Pakistani and Afghan forces along the porous border, which have been marred by acrid recriminations in recent months.
Pakistani officials have publicly accused NATO of failing to stop Taliban fighters sheltering in the Afghan provinces of Kunar and Nuristan, from which American forces have largely withdrawn, from carrying out attacks inside Pakistan.
The protests reached a crescendo in June after a Taliban ambush killed 13 Pakistani soldiers, 7 of whom were beheaded. Some Pakistani officials have gone as far as to accuse NATO and Afghan forces of secretly supporting the insurgents.
Comment: Sarkozy would be proud of Hollande leading France into illegal wars of aggression.