The Taliban’s newly-named top field commander has used his first public statement today to warn that new recruits were volunteering as suicide bombers and that Taliban fighters would continue their holy war until Western powers leave Afghanistan.

More than 60 suspected insurgents, including three regional commanders, were killed by airstrikes on two Taliban compounds in Afghanistan today.

Taliban leader Mullah Omar said the killing of its top field commander in Afghanistan “won’t create problems” for the hard-line militia, a spokesman said today.

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, officials said yesterday.

Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban’s most prominent military commander, was killed in fighting in southern Afghanistan with Afghan and Nato troops, officials said today.

A grisly video circulating in Pakistan allegedly shows a child beheading Ghulam Nabi, a Pakistani militant accused of betraying a top Taliban official killed in a December air strike in Afghanistan.

THE kidnapped translator for an Italian journalist was beheaded yesterday in southern Afghanistan, a purported spokesman for the Taliban said.

The kidnapped Afghan translator for an Italian journalist was beheaded on today in southern Afghanistan, a spokesman for the Taliban claimed.

Pakistan has arrested former Taliban defence minister Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, regarded as a top figure in the Afghan insurgency, a Pakistani intelligence official said.

US artillery and airstrikes killed between 50 and 60 suspected Taliban militants today, the fourth day of a Nato-led offensive in southern Afghanistan, a Nato spokesman said.

US-LED coalition forces believe they may have captured top Taliban leader Mullah Dadullah.

US-led coalition forces captured a militant fighter with only one leg in a battle this week in southern Afghanistan, and it was possible the militant could be top Taliban leader Mullah Dadullah, an Afghan general said today.

ONE hundred militants have enlisted to become suicide bombers in Afghanistan since the appearance of “blasphemous” cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, a top Taliban commander has said.

AFGHAN security forces have captured Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar’s personal security chief as he travelled in a van to the southern city of Kandahar, provincial officials said yesterday.

TALIBAN fighters ambushed a truck full of government soldiers in the southern province of Zabul, killing several, the provincial governor and a Taliban spokesman said yesterday.