'We took out Mehsud,' says Obama

Washington, Aug.21 (ANI): While the US officials have maintained that there is 90 percent chance that the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Baitullah Mehsud has been killed in a drone strike earlier this month, President Barack Obama, it seems, has no doubt about the Taliban chieftain's death.

During a live radio broadcast from the White House, Obama said: "You've got the Pakistan Army for the first time fighting in a very aggressive way and that's how we took out Mehsud, the top Taliban leader in Pakistan who was also one of Osama Bin Laden's key allies."

Obama said Mehsud's death was made possible due to an intensive US operation and sustained pressure on the Taliban and Al-Qaeda along the restive Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

He said Washington is determined to root out extremists from the region, and vowed to conduct peaceful Afghan election despite Taliban's warnings to disrupt it.

"We are continuing to ramp up the pressure in Afghanistan. And we had - what appears to be a successful election in Afghanistan despite the Taliban's effort to disrupt it. You've got General McChrystal over there and more troops who are putting pressure on the eastern and southern portions of Afghanistan," the Daily Times quoted Obama, as saying.

He said the goal is to squeeze the Taliban out from both sides of the Pak-Afghan border.

"So the goal here is essentially to have a pincher where we are squeezing them on both sides, we're eliminating their allies, it's making it more difficult for them to communicate, making it more difficult for them to operate safe havens, and over time what we hope to do is to flush them out," Obama said. (ANI)