Confirming death of Umar Mansoor, TTP names new chief for Darra, Peshawar

The alleged mastermind of 2014 Peshawar attack killed in drone strike carried out in Afghanistan, sources say

The outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has named the successor of Khalifa Umar Mansoor, the group’s chief for Darra Dam Khel region, after confirming his death more than a year after her was killed in a US drone strike in Afghanistan.

“We confirm the death of Khalifa Umar Mansoor, and announce that Khalifa Usman Mansoor will succeed him as TTP’s ameer in Darra Adam Khel and Peshawar,” the group said in a statement emailed to journalists on Wednesday.

Khalifa Mansoor, who had claimed credit for some of the most sickening violence in the country’s history, died in a US drone strike along with three of his bodyguards on July 13, last year in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar.





At the time, Pakistani and US military officials, and Taliban sources had confirmed his death, but the TTP never publicly confirmed Mansoor, who also went by the aliases Umar Naray and Khalid Khurasani, was dead.

A few days earlier a picture of Mansoor’s body surfaced on social media, which might have prompted the TTP to confirm his death on Wednesday.

The TTP didn’t give details of how Mansoor had died, leading some media outlets to believe he had been killed in back to back US drone strikes in the Afghan province of Paktia on Tuesday.

At least 31 suspected militants were killed in a series of drone strikes and air raids by US forces in Paktia, near the border with Kurram Agency, on Tuesday and Monday.



Family had nicknamed Mansoor ‘Naray’, or slim, because he was physically frail. He was the mastermind behind the methodical massacre of dozens of pupils at the Army Public School in Peshawar in December 2014.

On Jan 20, this year, Mansoor had also claimed credit for another attack on students, this time at Bacha Khan University in Charsadda in which more than 20 people were killed and another 20 were injured.

According to Reuters, Mansoor got a high school education in Islamabad and later studied in a madrassah. He spent some time working in Karachi as a labourer before joining the TTP soon after it was formed in late 2007.