Clashes erupt in Afghan, Taliban deny capture

Kabul, May 20: Fresh fighting erupted in southern afghanistan today after a man claiming to be top Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah dismissed a report he had been captured in heavy fighting this week.

Fighting in recent days has been some of the fiercest since the Taliban were overthrown in 2001, and it comes as thousands of NATO peacekeepers are arriving in the perilous south.

Clashes erupted in the Sangin district of the southern province of Helmand toay, said General Rahmatullah Raufi, the Afghan army's southern commander.

''More than 10 Taliban have been killed. We have suffered losses too, but I can not say how many,'' Raufi said.

A spokesman for the Taliban, who are fighting to oust foreign forces and defeat the Western-backed government, said Taliban ambushed a convoy of Afghan police and soldiers in the district.

The spokesman, Qari Mohammad Yousuf, said many police and soldiers had been killed and some had been captured. Five Taliban were also killed, he said by telephone.

Taliban spokesmen regularly exaggerate their enemies' losses and play down their own.

The Taliban have stepped up attacks on foreign and government forces in recent months as NATO is expanding its peacekeeping force from 9,000 to 16,000 in preparation for taking over security responsibilities in the south from U.S.-led forces.

Foreign commanders say the Taliban want to sap domestic support for the deployments, which will push the number of foreign troops to nearly 40,000, the most since 2001.

About 100 people, most of them militants, were killed in violence on Wednesday and Thursday in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, and in Ghazni province, southwest of Kabul, officials said.

''I am Mullah Dadullah"

The governor of Kandahar province, Assadullah Khalid, told a news conference yesterday that three senior Taliban members had been captured in the fighting in Kandahar.

He declined to identify them.

The BBC reported on Friday that Taliban military commander Mullah Dadullah had been captured by international forces in Kandahar. But Khalid did not confirm that, and Taliban spokesman denied it.

The one-legged Dadullah is a member of the Taliban's 10-man leadership council and is regarded as close to the fugitive top leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar.

His capture would be a major coup for U.S. and NATO forces and the government of President Hamid Karzai, who came to power after the Taliban were overthrown in late 2001.

The Afghan army commander in the south, General Rahmatullah Raufi, said a seriously wounded militant with only one leg had been captured. He was suspected of being Dadullah but his identity had not been confirmed, Raufi said.

In the past there have been several reports that Dadullah had been captured or surrounded and which turned out to be wrong.

A man claiming to be Dadullah telephoned Reuters late yesterday and denied he had been caught.

''I am Mullah Dadullah. The reports about my arrest are not only false but a pack of blatant lies,'' said the man, who sounded like Dadullah.

''The Americans and their slaves are trying to boost the morale of their troops by spreading false rumours,'' the man said. The Taliban refer to the Afghan government as slaves of the United States.

The man claiming to be Dadullah said the Taliban's jihad, or holy war, would continue and he dismissed the report that three senior Taliban had been captured.

Reuters

Related Stories