Hakimullah Mehsud's farmhouse was no refuge from US drone strike

The marble floors gleam inside the hidden compound where Pakistan's Taliban chief died on Friday. There are lush green lawns and a towering minaret.

The home of Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud, who died in a US drone strike, was no grubby mountain cave.

Mehsud spent his days flitting around Pakistan's rugged tribal areas to avoid the attentions of US drones. But his family, including two wives, had the use of an eight-roomed farmhouse set amid lawns and orchards laden with apples, oranges, grapes and pomegranates.

The compound in Dande Darpa Khel village, five kilometres north of Miran Shah, was adorned with a tall minaret - purely for decorative purposes.

Militant sources said the property in the North Waziristan tribal area was bought for Mehsud nearly a year ago for US$120,000 - a huge sum by Pakistani standards - by close aide Latif Mehsud, who was captured by the US in Afghanistan last month.

The compound was seen several times by an Agence France-Presse journalist when the property's previous owner, a wealthy landowner, lived there.

With the Pakistan army headquarters for restive North Waziristan just a kilometre away, locals thought of Mehsud's estate as the "safest" place in a dangerous area.