A missile-firing drone killed six people in Afghanistan today including a veteran militant believed to have defected to Islamic State (IS) from the Taliban, Afghan officials said.
The senior militant, former Guantanamo Bay detainee Mullah Abdul Rauf, was killed in the violence-plagued southern province of Helmand, officials there said.
Police chief Nabi Jan Mullahkhel said Rauf was travelling in a car when the drone attacked. The other casualties included his brother-in-law and four Pakistanis, Mullahkhel said.
Rauf had been influential in Afghanistan's jihadi movement for well over a decade.
Media reports last month said he had begun recruiting for Islamic State, part of a push by the movement to gain traction beyond its stronghold in Iraq and Syria.
Helmand's deputy governor, Mohammad Jan Rasulyar, said Rauf's membership of IS could not be confirmed but his associates were dressed in black outfits often worn by IS members.
A US military report released by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks in 2011 said that Rauf had tried to pass himself off as a low level Taliban worker who "delivered bread," but that interrogators suspected he was more senior.
Guantanamo interrogators said Rauf had revealed detailed knowledge of Afghanistan's opium trade.
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