Pakistani officials said Saturday that a top Taliban leader was probably killed in an airstrike in the northwest, dealing another blow to a militant group that fighters say has been leaderless since January. Maulvi Faqir Mohammed, an al-Qaeda-linked commander of the Pakistani Taliban, was almost certainly among a large group of insurgents killed Friday in a Pakistani helicopter gunship attack in the Mohmand region of the volatile tribal areas, Interior Minister Rehman Malik told reporters. Mohammed was the top leader in another tribal area, Bajaur agency, and a deputy leader of the broader Taliban organization in Pakistan. Analysts said Mohammed's death, coming amid stepped-up military operations and U.S. drone strikes, would help reduce the Pakistani Taliban to something more like the patchwork of local insurgencies that it was before it grew into a lethal umbrella group. Mohammed had been considered a candidate to lead the national organization. "They're shellshocked," Aftab Khan Sherpao, a former Pakistani interior minister, said of the Taliban. "Pakistan is on the front foot right now." – Washington Post