Taliban Bigwig Baitullah Mehsud Killed In Airstrike?

It had been released earlier this week that one of Baitullah Mehsud's wives were killed in a UAV airstrike this week while at Mehsud's father in laws compound. Now, an aide to Mehsud says that Mehsud was indeed killed in an airstrike. The US has been trying to get at Mehsud for some time now, and the admission that his wife was killed suggested that we were on to his movements.

Pakistan's Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, who led a violent campaign of suicide attacks and assassinations against the Pakistani government, has been killed in a U.S. missile strike, a militant commander and aide to Mehsud said Friday.

Earlier, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told reporters in Islamabad that intelligence showed Mehsud had been killed in Wednesday's missile strike on his father-in-law's house in Pakistan's lawless tribal area, but authorities would travel to the site to verify his death.

Pakistani and U.S. intelligence officials said the CIA was behind the strike. All spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

"I confirm that Baitullah Mehsud and his wife died in the American missile attack in South Waziristan," Taliban commander Kafayat Ullah told The Associated Press by telephone. He would not give any further details.

Mehsud had been a thorn in the side of not only the US, but Afghanistan and Pakistan, where Mehsud had been carrying on a war against the Pakistani government's efforts to pacify the frontier provinces and to limit the reach of the Islamists. Mehsud was a capable and determined leader, who had a loyal following, and whose thugs managed to capture wide areas extending beyond their tribal areas in the frontier provinces, putting the Pakistani government in jeopardy.

It was the realization of latter fact that meant that the Pakistani government, for all of its public opposition to the US covert airstrikes, never truly minded that the US was hunting al Qaeda and Taliban in the frontier provinces. The US was doing what the Pakistani military could or would not do.

Still, this could be a misdirection ploy by Mehsud's Taliban group, as Bill Roggio at the Long War Journal reports. US officials aren't nearly as sure that they got their man.

UPDATE:
Bill Roggio now reports with more certainty that Mehsud indeed was killed in the airstrike, and notes possible successors. One in particular is worrisome, Qari Hussain, for his use of child suicide bombers, but another of Baitullah's cousins is responsible for repeated attacks on NATO supply lines through Pakistan:

Possible successors to Baitullah include his cousins Hakeemullah Mehsud and Qari Hussain Mehsud; North Waziristan leader Hafiz Gul Bahadar; and Bajuar Taliban sub commander Waliur Rahman.

Hakeemullah directs Taliban operations in Arakzai, Kurram, and Khyber. He has been behind the attack against NATO convoys moving through Peshawar. More than 700 NATO vehicles and containers have been destroyed in these atacks over the past eight months.

Qari Hussain is a fear[ed] military commander in South Waziristan. He is renown for training children to become suicide bombers.

Hafiz Gul Bahadar is also a candidate to take over the Pakistani Taliban in the event of Baitullah's death. Bahadar is widely respected in Taliban circles and has close links to the Taliban in Afghanistan as well as a Qaeda.