A senior Uzbek Al-Qaeda-linked militant leader has been injured in Pakistan's tribal region, a military spokesman said on Tuesday, Xinhua reported.
The private Geo TV channel quoted Director General of the Inter Services Public Relations Major General Athar Abbas as saying that there were unconfirmed reports that Tahir Yuldashev, leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, had been hurt in South Waziristan tribal region.
He said Tahir was hurt at the Makeen area, the stronghold of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud.
The Pakistani forces have received orders to launch an operation against Mehsud and his fighters, he said.
In 2004 the army claimed that Tahir Yuldashev was injured along with his local facilitators when the army for the first time started a military operation near Wana, the center of South Waziristan, according to the News Network International (NNI) news agency.
Yuldashev is the most wanted man in Uzbekistan and is considered a close confidant of Osama bin Laden. In 1999, he was sentenced to death in his absence for a series of bombing in the Uzbek capital Tashkent.
The NNI quoted intelligence officials as saying that Yuldashev had taken refuge in South Waziristan some time after the United States-led military campaign ousted the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in late 2001.