Wounded key Taliban figure captured

QUETTA—Security forces have arrested renowned Taliban commander Mullah Mansoor from the seminary of Maulana Noor Khan located in area of Gawal Ismail Zai, alongwith six of his associates. The security forces which surrounded the seminary came under fire from Taliban upon which the security forces retaliated, and arrested all six including Mullah Mansoor Dadullah, Haji Lala, Khudadad, Raza Muhammad, Khalid Dad, and Abdul Razzaq, all in wounded condition.
The arrest has been confirmed by spokesman ISPR, Maj. Gen Ather Abbas, and an American media source has informed that Mullah Mansoor Dadullah was challenged by security forces while he was entering Pakistani territory from Afghanistan. Instead of stopping, the Taliban leader opened fire on security forces, which was duly returned and injured all the six Taliban who were later arrested. Three of the arrested have been shifted to a hospital while three of them have been shifted to some unknown place in a helicopter for investigations.
Security forces captured and wounded a top Afghan Taliban commander early on Monday, police said, days after Islamabad denied the presence of senior militants on its soil. Mullah Mansoor Dadullah — the brother of the Islamist movement’s slain military commander in Afghanistan — and four other rebels were seized in southwestern Baluchistan province, provincial police chief Saud Gohar said.
The announcement comes amid a slew of warnings from US officials that senior militant leaders are operating in Pakistan’s border areas and posing a threat to security throughout the region.Dadullah “has been wounded and arrested early this morning. He resisted when our men launched an operation,” in the village of Gowal Ismail Zai, near the Afghan border, Gohar told.
“We had reports of his presence from intelligence sources... he was hiding in a house in the village. Four others were also arrested including three guards of Dadullah,” the police chief added. Some women and children were also in the house and Pakistani authorities were investigating their links to the detained commander, a security source said.
In Kabul, Afghan defence ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi welcomed the news of Dadullah’s capture but would not comment further. A senior Afghan official said on condition of anonymity that reports received by the government suggested the capture was linked to a dispute between Dadullah and the Taliban’s central command.
Dadullah had succeeded his elder brother — the Taliban’s most top military commander Mullah Dadullah — who was killed in an Afghan and NATO operation in southern Afghanistan in May 2007.The Taliban said in a statement late December that they had sacked Mansoor Dadullah “because he disobeyed orders of the Islamic Emirate” of the Taliban.
But a spokesman for the commander denied that he was fired, leading to speculation of infighting among the rebels. This came at the same time that media reports emerged that British intelligence agents were involved in talks with senior Taliban in the southern Afghan province of Helmand, although it was never clear who they might have been. There was no immediate confirmation of the arrest from the Taliban.
Zabihullah Mujahed, a Taliban spokesman, said Mansoor Dadullah was one of five Taliban who were freed in May last year in exchange for a kidnapped Italian journalist, Daniele Mastrogiacomo. The Afghan government has never said which prisoners were released in the controversial deal.—Agencies