Coalition claim top Taliban leader captured

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

There is a “good chance” that the one-legged militant, captured in a joint Afghan-coalition operation in Kandahar province on Wednesday, is Dadullah, said General Rehmatullah Raufi, head of the Afghan military’s southern region.

Dadullah, who lost a leg fighting for the Taliban during its rise to power in the mid-1990s, is one of the militia’s top commanders, responsible for operations in eastern and south-eastern Afghanistan. Neither the US-led coalition nor the Afghan government in Kabul said they could immediately confirm that Dadullah had been captured.

A US military spokeswoman, Lieutenant Tamara Lawrence, said coalition authorities were looking into the matter but she had no information to support it.

A senior Afghan government official, however, said: “We’re pretty sure” that Dadullah is in custody, though officials were still confirming his identity.

The authorities said yesterday that more than 100 Taliban had been killed in the battle. Six policemen, three Afghan soldiers, a Canadian woman soldier and three civilians also died.

Around 170 members of the Islamistic fundamentalist group have been killed across the province.