U.S. Airstrike Targets Overall Taliban Leader Mullah Mansur

The Pentagon says it launched an airstrike in Afghanistan Saturday targeting Mullah Akhtar Mansur, the Taliban's overall leader. The Pentagon is still assessing the results of the airstrike to determine whether he was killed.

"Today, the Department of Defense conducted an airstrike that targeted Taliban leader Mullah Mansur in a remote area of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region," said Peter Cook, the Pentagon's Press Secretary in a statement released Saturday.

"Mansur has been the leader of the Taliban and actively involved with planning attacks against facilities in Kabul and across Afghanistan, presenting a threat to Afghan civilians and security forces, our personnel, and Coalition partners," Cook said. "We are still assessing the results of the strike and will provide more information as it becomes available.

"Mansur has been an obstacle to peace and reconciliation between the Government of Afghanistan and the Taliban, prohibiting Taliban leaders from participating in peace talks with the Afghan government that could lead to an end to the conflict," he said.

"Since the death of Mullah Omar and Mansur's assumption of leadership, the Taliban have conducted many attacks that have resulted in the death of tens of thousands of Afghan civilians and Afghan security forces as well as numerous U.S. and Coalition personnel," he added.

Mansur assumed the leadership of the Taliban in July, 2015 after the group publicly disclosed that its previous leader Mullah Omar had died of natural causes in 2013 in Pakistan.

Mansur's leadership had resulted in some initial friction within the Taliban.

There are 9,800 American military service members in a training and advisory mission for Afghan troops. The majority of them stay on their bases to conduct their training, but some special operations forces still partner with their Afghan counterparts to advise them during missions.

The use of airstrikes in Afghanistan has been limited since the start of the training mission last year. Airstrikes could only be used against the Taliban if the group posed an immediate danger to Afghan or U.S. troops. In December the rules were expanded to allow the targeting of ISIS forces in Afghanistan. There was no change to the authorization of counter terrorism airstrikes against the remaining small al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan.