Mullah Dadullah Gets Caught In The War On Terror

The Taliban's most prominent military commander, a one-legged fighter who orchestrated an ethnic massacre and a rash of beheadings, was killed in a US-led military operation in southern Afghanistan.

Mullah Dadullah, a top lieutenant of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, was killed yesterday in the southern province of Helmand, according to reports by Afghanistan's intelligence service.

A Nato statement confirmed his death, saying it had dealt the insurgency ``a serious blow''.

Dadullah is one of the highest-ranking Taliban leaders killed since the fall of the hard-line regime following the US-led invasion in 2001.

His death represents a major victory for the Afghan government and the international coalition that has struggled to contain a Taliban-led insurgency wracking the south and east of the country.

Dadullah's body was shown to reporters at a news conference in the governor's compound.

But Qari Yousef Ahmadi, a purported Taliban spokesman, denied that the Taliban commander had been killed. ``Mullah Dadullah is alive,'' Ahmadi insisted.

In December, a US airstrike near the Pakistan border killed another top Taliban commander in southern Afghanistan, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani. Dadullah, Osmani and policy-maker Mullah Obaidullah had been considered to be Omar's top three leaders.

Dadullah, who comes from the southern province of Uruzgan, lost a leg fighting against the Soviet army that occupied Afghanistan in the 1980s. He emerged as a Taliban commander during its fight against the Northern Alliance in northern Afghanistan during the 1990s, helping the hard-line militia to capture the city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

An ethnic Pashtun, the group that makes up the core of the Taliban and is prominent in eastern and southern Afghanistan, Dadullah led a Taliban massacre of ethnic Hazaras in 1999 in the province of Bamiyan, where the Taliban in 2000 destroyed two large, ancient Buddha statues carved into a hillside cliff.

Since the Taliban's ouster in late 2001, Dadullah emerged as the group's most prominent and feared commander. He often appeared in videos and media interviews, and earlier this year predicted a massive militant spring offensive that has failed to materialise.




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