Cornered top Taliban kills himself in blast

QUETTA, Pakistan - A Taliban once held at Guantanamo Bay who became one of Pakistan's most-wanted rebel leaders killed himself with a hand grenade yesterday after he was cornered by security forces, officials said.

The death of Abdullah Mehsud, a stout, round-faced man in his early 30s who lost a leg years ago fighting for the Taliban, was a boost for Pakistani authorities under pressure from the United States to crack down on Taliban and al-Qaeda forces who are fighting on both sides of the Afghan border.

Mehsud was wanted in "many terrorist cases," Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said.

A Pakistani intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to reporters, said Mehsud was intercepted on his way back from Afghanistan's Helmand province, where he had fought with the Taliban for the last year or more.

Police surrounded Mehsud and three other men before dawn in the home of an Islamist politician in Zhob, 160 miles from the southwestern city of Quetta, officials said. Cheema said security forces had trailed Mehsud for three days before moving in.

"Thanks be to God that only he was blown up and our men were safe," Zhob police chief Atta Mohammed said.

Mehsud was incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after U.S.-allied Afghan forces captured him in northern Afghanistan in December 2001. It remains unclear why he was released from Guantanamo in March 2004.

He quickly took up arms again, leading local and foreign militants in Pakistan's South Waziristan, a mountainous stronghold of militants in the tribal belt considered a possible hideout for al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Zahid Hussain, an author and expert on Pakistan's militant groups, said Mehsud's defiance made him a hero among fellow militants.

In another development, assailants fired four rockets into a city in northwestern Pakistan today, killing 10 people and wounding 35, police said. The rockets hit two houses, a mosque and a shop in the city of Bannu, said Khwaja Mohammed, a city police official.