A US drone strike killed Khan Sayed, alias Sajna, a senior commander of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and 12 other militants, a media report said Thursday.

Sajna was killed in the US drone strike in Afghanistan, near the border with the North Waziristan region of Pakistan, the New York Times claimed.

TTP controlled almost all of the North Waziristan Agency until troops launched an offensive there last year, driving many of its members into Afghanistan.

North Waziristan’s Shawal Valley was a stronghold of Sajna, a leader of a breakaway faction of the TTP whose name was added to a sanctions list of ‘specially designated global terrorists’ by US authorities last year.

The drone strike occurred in the Damma region in Khost Province near Shahadianu Patala, a Pakistani town in North Waziristan, the Times quoted Pakistani intelligence officials as saying. They said the strike had killed 12 other militants and wounded 20.

Another Pakistani intelligence official also reported that the commander had been killed in the strike.

The claims have not yet been independently confirmed, partly because of the remoteness of the site and the restrictions on journalists’ access to the area. Taliban commanders were said to be meeting to resolve the growing differences among the various Taliban offshoots.