LONDON: Al-Qaeda is trying to install a new "chief terrorist" in Pakistan's tribal regions after the claimed killing of Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, Pakistani interior minister Rehman Malik said Monday.

Malik told BBC radio that the Taliban were in disarray and fleeing the area following the apparent killing of their commander in Pakistan and hoped the border regions would now open up to greater development.

"All the credible intelligence which I have from that is to finally confirm it," the minister said, when asked if Mehsud was dead following the US drone missile attack Wednesday in South Waziristan.

"It's one of the achievements and I also feel that after the killing of Baitullah Mehsud, the whole TTP (the Tehreek-e-Taliban umbrella group)... it will take some time for them to regroup.

"The information which has come since three days, most of these militants are running away from that area.

"The other thing which is a bit worrying is that Al-Qaeda is getting grouped in the same place and now they are trying to find out somebody to install him as the leader, as the chief terrorist in that area."

Pakistani analysts say that Mehsud's purported killing will put renewed pressure on the government to clampdown on militants holed up in the tribal belt and assert more control over the wild, semi-autonomous terrain.

Hundreds of Islamist fighters are believed to have fled Afghanistan into Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal areas to carve out safe havens after the US-led invasion toppled the hardline Taliban regime in Kabul in late 2001. LINK