Taliban Leader Captured, fighters Killed In Afghanistan

(RTTNews) -

A Taliban leader was captured Monday in an operation carried out by Afghan commandos backed by coalitions forces while U.S.-led and Afghan troops killed five alleged Taliban fighters during "complex operations" targeting them in southern Afghanistan, reports say.

The Taliban head was arrested in his compound without any resistance and the troops recovered rocket-propelled grenade launcher, machine gun with ammunition, AK-47, one mine and bomb-making materials. He was involved in organizing attacks and trafficking weapons as well as abductions in the Afghan western region.

Meanwhile soldiers shot the five alleged Taliban fighters as they searched compounds in the Taliban flashpoint of Zhari district in Kandahar province where troops found and "protected" 150 civilians, including 50 children.

The troops "conducted a complex operation after receiving a tip on the location of Taliban operatives connected to bomb-making and other nefarious activities," a U.S.-led force said in a statement, adding the alleged Taliban fighters were killed after they refused orders to evacuate buildings. Ten men with suspected links to Taliban were detained during the operation, the military said. 

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Troops kill 20 Taliban as Pakistan talks suspended

Mon Apr 27, 8:43 pm ET

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) –

Pakistani troops killed 20 alleged Taliban fighters in a ground and air operation in the northwest, the military said, after a shaky peace deal was thrown into doubt when the Taliban suspended talks.

The deaths take the toll since Sunday when the military launched its operation in Lower Dir district to around 50, officials said.

"Twenty militants were killed today by the Frontier Corps troops in Maidan area of Lower Dir," the military media wing said in a statement.

Paramilitary troops and helicopter gunships bombed suspected bases in Lower Dir for a second day running, a military official earlier said.

Helicopter gunships targeted different militant hideouts, the official told AFP, on condition of anonymity.

"Eight security officials were also killed in two days of operation," another military official said, requesting anonymity.

The Taliban earlier suspended talks with the government after Pakistan's military launched a fresh offensive against Taliban fighters in the northwest, under intense US pressure to stop the advance of the Taliban movement in the region.

"Our council of leaders met on Sunday night and decided to suspend peace negotiations with the government in North West Frontier Province," said a spokesman for Soofi Mohammad, the cleric who negotiated a peace deal between the two sides in February.

"We, however, still adhere to the February deal," Ameer Izzat Khan told AFP, referring to the highly controversial accord that put three million people under sharia law.

Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), led by Baitullah Mehsud, a wanted tribal warlord called the operation "unwanted".

Demanding an immediate halt to the offensive, TTP spokesman Maulvi Omar told AFP "the operation can harm the peace deal."

"If the operation is not stopped Taliban from other places will be compelled to extend support to Taliban in Dir," Omar said in a phone call from an unknown location.

Despite the deal, Taliban members on Monday took control of a telephone exchange in Behrain town, 30 kilometres (18 miles) north of Swat valley, police officials said.

A remote-controlled bomb in the northwestern town of Lakki Marwat killed two people and wounded five police officials, police said.

The Taliban promised to lay down their arms in exchange for sharia courts in a deal billed as the end of a nearly two-year brutal insurgency that ripped apart the once-peaceful Swat area.

But the agreement was followed by further encroachments in the region, and the government has been in talks with the Taliban Movement to try to restore peace there.

President Asif Ali Zardari, who recently ratified the sharia accord, told AFP Monday that troops had now ousted the Taliban from Lower Dir, 75 kilometres (46 miles) west of Swat.

But he said more police were needed on the ground to prevent the Taliban fighters from regaining control there.

Zardari said the peace deal with the Taliban remained valid "until the NWFP (North West Frontier Province) government tells me otherwise."

"There will be a reassessment of the situation by the provincial government and if needed we'll come back to parliament and the parliament will decide," he said in an interview with foreign journalists.

Zardari said an offensive in Swat was a "possibility" but that the geography of the region "limits our capabilities."

"It is a very populated area... the casualties would have been heavy," he said.

Zardari said that Pakistani intelligence believes Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is dead but acknowledged they had no evidence.

"The Americans tell me they don't know, and they are much more equipped than us to trace him. And our own intelligence services obviously think that he does not exist any more, that he is dead," Zardari told reporters.

"But there is no evidence, you cannot take that as a fact," he said. "We are between facts and fiction."

Zardari was responding to reports that Pakistani Taliban in the troubled Swat valley have said they would welcome bin Laden if he wants to visit the former Pakistani hill resort now in the hands of Islamists.

The advance from Swat into the neighbouring district of Buner of hundreds of Taliban, whose brethren were ousted by the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan, saw Washington brand the Taliban Movement "an existential threat" to Pakistan.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that Pakistan was "basically abdicating to the Taliban and to the extremists." US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates called on the country's leaders to take action.

Clinton also voiced "concerns" for Pakistan's nuclear arsenal if the Taliban topples the government, according to the transcript of an interview with Fox News.

But Zardari told AFP on Monday Pakistan's nuclear installations were in "safe hands"

"All Pakistani nuclear installations are under extra security," he said.

Across Pakistan, more than 1,800 people have been killed in a wave of Al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked extremist attacks since July 2007.