A SUSPECTED US drone strike on an Islamic seminary in Pakistan has killed a senior member of the Taliban-linked Haqqani network.
It was the first drone strike in the country since Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud was killed earlier this month in an attack that sparked a fierce power struggle within the fragmented insurgency.
Maulvi Ahmad Jan, an adviser to Sirajuddin Haqqani, the feared head of the Taliban-linked Haqqani network, was in the madrassa when at least three rockets hit his room in the Hangu district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa just before sunrise.
A senior Haqqani official said: "We lost another valuable figure this morning."
A Pakistani intelligence source said Haqqani himself was spotted at the same seminary two days earlier.
The group is one of the main enemies of US-led forces in neighbouring Afghanistan, frequently launching attacks on foreign troops from its mountainous hideouts.
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