ISLAMABAD --The Pakistani Taliban confirmed Tuesday that their leader, Hakimullah Mahsud, died from injuries suffered in a U.S. drone missile strike last month, an attack that forces the insurgency to find a new leader for the second time in six months.

The death of Mr. Mahsud, engineer of a devastating series of suicide attacks and raids on markets, mosques and security installations across Pakistan in the latter half of 2009, gives the United States another major victory in its ongoing campaign of drone missile strikes against top Taliban and al-Qaida leaders.

A drone strike last August killed Mr. Mahsud's predecessor, Baitullah Mahsud. Missiles fired by drones over Pakistan's tribal areas along the Afghan border have also killed 15 senior al-Qaida commanders since 2004.

But experts do not expect the loss of Hakimullah Mahsud, 28, to deal a fatal blow to the Taliban as it battles the government in the country's northwest. After Baitullah Mahsud's death last summer, the Taliban was able to regroup and launch some of the deadliest attacks against Pakistanis in years, including the Oct. 10 commando-style raid on army headquarters in Rawalpindi, a sprawling, heavily guarded complex. The raid left 14 military officers and civilian workers dead.

Pakistani authorities initially believed that Mr. Mahsud had been injured in a Jan. 17 U.S. drone strike that targeted two cars in North Waziristan, a largely Taliban-controlled district in the tribal areas.

Taliban sources said, however, that their leader was wounded in a drone strike Jan. 14 in Shaktoi, a village in South Waziristan near the North Waziristan border. A Taliban militant in the Orakzai district of Pakistan's tribal areas said Mr. Mahsud suffered serious injuries to his legs and abdomen in the attack.

The sources said militants were trying to move Mr. Mahsud to Pakistan's largest city, Karachi, for treatment, but he died near the southern Punjab city of Multan, 460 miles northeast of Karachi. Taliban sources said he died Sunday, though that could not be confirmed.

Pakistani security and intelligence sources confirmed Mr. Mahsud's death, but denied that he died in Multan and instead said he died somewhere in the tribal region.

The missile strike that killed Mr. Mahsud came amid a sharp rise in U.S. drone activity in the tribal areas following the Dec. 30 suicide bombing of a secret base in Khost, Afghanistan, that killed seven CIA workers. Since that attack, at least a dozen drone strikes in northwest Pakistan have occurred, killing at least 100 people.

The Taliban has not named Hakimullah Mahsud's successor, but the likeliest candidate appears to be Noor Jamal, the Taliban's commander in the Orakzai and neighboring Kurram tribal regions, and reportedly a close ally of Mr. Mahsud's.

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