Drone attack kills senior IS militant in Afghanistan

Six people were killed in a drone strike in Afghanistan on Monday, including former Guantanamo Bay inmate and Taliban-turned-"Islamic State" militant Abdul Rauf . Rauf died, along with at least one relative and four Pakistanis, in Afghanistan's violence-plagued Helmand province, local police said.

Rauf had been active in the Afghanistan jihadist movement for more than ten years, resuming his role as a senior Taliban leader after his release from Afghan custody, following his repatriation from Guantanamo. Last month, however, media reported that Rauf had begun recruiting for "Islamic State" (IS), in a push by the terrorist organization to move beyond its stronghold in Iraq and Syria.

He was said to have begun raising black IS-style flags in towns throughout Helmand, taking down the Taliban's own white and black flags.

Helmand's deputy governor Mohammad Jan Rasulyar told Reuters news agency that "it is too early to confirm" that Rauf was a member of IS, but "his people were wearing the same clothes and mask," referring to the all-black uniform worn by IS militants in the videos and photos they post online.

According to documents released by the anti-secrecy group Wikileaks in 2011, Rauf had tried to pass himself off to the US officials who captured him in 2001 as a low-level Taliban worker who delivered food, but his interrogators suspected he was more senior than he let on.

He was repatriated to his native Afghanistan in 2007, where he allegedly became the Taliban's shadow governor in the country's mostly tribal Uruzgan province.

es/rg (AP, Reuters)