US 90 percent confident Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud is dead

Officials claim Mehsud's death sparked a fierce power struggle among his deputies, officials said, despite claims and counterclaims as to the fate of the country's most wanted man.

American and Pakistani government and intelligence officials, as well as some Taliban commanders and at least one rival militant, have said Baitullah Mehsud died in Wednesday's drone strike on his father-in-law's house in northwestern Pakistan's rugged, lawless tribal area near the Afghan border.

President Barack Obama's national security adviser, James Jones, said America was 90 percent confident Mehsud had been killed.

‘We think so. We put it in the 90 per cent category,’ Gen Jones told NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ when asked if Baitullah had been killed in a US missile strike on Wednesday.  Pakistan, he said, also had confirmed the death. Neither side has produced any concrete evidence, and the claims were impossible to verify.

Later, in an interview to CBS Face the Nation, Gen Jones said Baitullah’s death was a very important development.

‘First of all, it’s important because this is Pakistan’s public enemy number one,’ he said.

‘He controlled a very violent aspect of the insurgent problems on the Pakistani side of the border. And this would be — this is a big deal.’

A Pentagon official, Bryan Whitman, however, warned that Baitullah’s death had not diminished the threat of the Taliban.

‘I don’t want to make more than one should of a single individual,’ he said.