The hellfire missiles fired by the CIA drones caught the Pakistan Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, helpless, as the militant commander, a diabetic was on a drip infusion for his kidney ailment.
Mehsud was lying on the roof top of the house of his father-in-law, Maulvi Ikramuddin while his wife and a relative a doctor were tending to him in the village of Zanghara in his stronghold of South Waziristan, the New York Times reported.
The paper said Ikramuddin's brother, a medical practitioner was treating him, quoting two Taliban fighters reached by telephone on Friday.
NYT said Pakistani security officials had viewed American video of the attack, apparently from pictures sent by surveillance cameras on board the drones.
"He was clearly visible with his wife," the paper quoted a senior security official as saying, who had seen the video. "His torso remained, while half his body was blown up, " the official told the paper in the first vivid account of the attack to reach the media.
NYT claimed that as many as 12 people were confirmed to have been killed in the strike including Mehsud, his wife, his father-in-law, mother-in-law, an unidentified commander and his seven bodyguards.
Pakistan said Friday it believed Mehsud, the charismatic commander of the Pakistani Taliban, had been killed in a US drone attack in a major blow for the Islamist militants.