Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud alive or dead?

Pakistani intelligence agents were scrambling on Thursday to determine whether Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud was killed along with his wife in a U.S. missile strike a day earlier.

A relative of the dead woman, Mehsud's second wife, said the chieftain was not present when the U.S. drone aircraft fired two missiles at the house of his father-in-law in Makeen, a village in South Waziristan -- in northwest Pakistan.

But rumours swirl that he may have been wounded or killed.

Following are some details about Mehsud.

-- In late 2007, Mehsud proclaimed himself leader of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the Movement of Taliban of Pakistan, grouping 13 factions. Pakistani Taliban leaders have sworn allegiance to Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.

-- Mehsud became Public Enemy Number One after launching suicide attacks in 2007 against the military and politicians.

-- The government of ex-president Pervez Musharraf and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency both saw Mehsud as chief suspect in the 2007 assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Mehsud denied it.

-- The United States had offered a reward of $5 million for information leading to Mehsud's location or arrest. The Pakistan government has put a $615,000 bounty on his head.

-- Regarded as an ally of al Qaeda, Mehsud has assembled militants from Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a Punjabi based group that has provided al Qaeda's foot soldiers in Pakistan, along with Uzbeks and other Central Asian fighters within al Qaeda's network. Together with his own men, Mehsud is reckoned to have 10,000 to over 20,000 fighters with him in mountainous South Waziristan.

-- Pakistani officials say Mehsud is helped by arch-rival India, but diplomats in Islamabad are skeptical and see that as an attempt to dislodge Indian influence in Afghanistan.

-- Critics say Pakistan's army tolerated Mehsud for too long, and deride a 2005 peace deal, saying militants were paid off.

-- In June, U.S. drones began attacking Mehsud territory more frequently after Pakistan's government ordered its army to pursue Mehsud. Pakistani forces have bombarded Taliban positions and sealed off roads, but there has been no all-out assault. -- Diplomats say Mehsud's elimination would mark a major coup for Pakistan, but doubt it will help Western forces fighting the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. -- Mehsud was born in 1974 in Bannu in North West Frontier Province. His ancestral village of Shaga is in South Waziristan, the poorest of seven Federally Administered Tribal Areas from the ethnic Pashtun belt straddling the border with Afghanistan.

-- Mehsud belongs to the Bromikhel, a traditional sub-clan of the fiercely independent Mehsuds. The son of a minor cleric, Mehsud was educated to the age of 12 in a madrasa, or religious school, is barely literate and worked as a truck driver. -- Journalists who have met Mehsud describe him as physically unimposing, round-faced beneath a beard. He also suffered from diabetes. He has two brothers among his followers.