Pakistani Officials Arrest Top Afghan Taliban Commander
By VOA News
11 February 2008
A former top Taliban commander was critically wounded and captured by Pakistani security forces Monday after a shootout near the border with Afghanistan.
Pakistan's army spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas says Mullah Mansoor Dadullah and five other militants were challenged as they tried to cross into Pakistan's southwestern province of Baluchistan. They refused to stop and were detained after an exchange of gunfire.
Mansoor Dadullah took over as commander of Taliban forces in the southern Afghan province of Helmand after his brother, Mullah Dadullah, was killed by British forces last year. But he was later fired by the Taliban for insubordination.
Also today, a suicide bomber killed six election workers in North Waziristan. An independent candidate in next week's parliamentary elections, Nisar Alik Kjhan, apparently escaped the attack at Mir Ali, but several of his supporters were wounded.
Afghan and U.S. officials say Pakistan's border regions are a staging point for cross-border attacks on U.S., NATO and Afghan forces inside Afghanistan. Dadullah is the latest in a series of high-ranking Taliban and al-Qaida-linked militants to have been killed or captured on either side of the Pakistan-Afghan border in the past year or so.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP and AP.
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