PESHAWAR: Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan’s chief Baitullah Mehsud may have been killed in a US missile strike that took place in South Waziristan late on Tuesday, intelligence officials say.

There has been no official confirmation in this regard and sources say these reports are '95 per cent credible and true’.

Question remains: was Pakistan’s most wanted man present in the house of his father-law, when a US drone fired two missiles into the room his wife was living in? And if he was there, what happened to him?

The question boggled the minds and was perhaps the most discussed in government and security circles on Thursday.

Some officials say circumstantial evidence, certain intercepts and reports from the government’s operatives indicate that the man who carried a $5 million bounty on his head is no more.

Government officials are hesitant to ‘officially’ confirm Baitullah Mehsud’s death in the attack on Malik Ikaramuddin’s house in the Zangara village of South Waziristan tribal region on Tuesday.

Their reluctance is understandable. Past claims about the death of other TTP leaders, including its deputy, Maulvi Faqir Mohammad and Swat TTP leader, Mullah Fazlullah, have, embarrassingly, turned out to be untrue.

But the fact that the missile strike was carried out by a US drone, that the CIA has been using with relatively higher success rate in taking out some mid-level Al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan’s tribal areas, has generated a degree of optimism that the most dreaded man in the country may have died.

Circumstantial evidence abound, say these sources. The vehicle in the use of the 37-year-old head of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan had also been hit in the strike on the same compound.

Baitullah Mehsud had married Ikramuddin’s daughter last year — his second marriage — and his younger wife was at her father’s house on the night of the strike. Officials quoting different accounts say Baitullah was visiting his wife in the upper portion of the house when it was hit.

The Taliban, as per the standard operating procedure, threw an immediate cordon around the site of the missile strike, but unlike in the past, the cordon was five kilometres wider than the usual practice and no one was allowed either to enter or leave the area.

A shura of senior Taliban commanders was called in Karama in the Ladha sub-division on Wednesday evening to take stock of the situation following the missile strike and telephone access to Zangara was blocked.

Some officials now privately claim with a degree of confidence that the TTP chief had been killed along with his wife — their confidence level in the authenticity of their assessment hovers between 60 to 85 to 95 per cent.

That the Taliban have neither confirmed nor denied reports and rumours doing the round tends to lend more credence to their assessment. ‘We think that he is no more’, said one senior official.

The Taliban shura is reportedly currently meeting to make a possible announcement and appoint a successor.

These circles insist that any formal announcement has been withheld till the TTP shura agrees on a consensus candidate to succeed Baitullah and the names of Hakimullah Mehsud, Azmatullah Mehsud and Waliur Rehman Mehsud are already being mentioned as possible candidates for the slot.

But there are those who continue to believe that the TTP chief is alive and kicking and that Friday’s shura meeting has been convened by Baitullah himself to assure his comrades that he was unharmed.

After all, this is not the first time reports of Baitullah’s death have surfaced, the sources said.

In September, 2008, a newspaper reported Baitullah’s death due to kidney failure. Some government officials endorsed these reports, attributing their assessment to the mysterious disappearance of the TTP chief to hush up rumours that were demoralising his fighting cadres.

But weeks later, not only did Baitullah resurface, he also hosted a feast to celebrate his second marriage.