Senior Taliban leaders captured

Pakistani intelligence agents have arrested five senior Taliban leaders, including a deputy to fugitive Taliban chief Mullah Mohammed Omar, a security official said tonight.

The arrests were made after security agents made raids on several homes in north-west Pakistan, the official said.

He identified two of the captured men as Maulvi Abdul Qadeer, a deputy to Omar, and Abdul Kabir, a former governor in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province.

The official would not disclose the names of the remaining three leaders, but said “they are also important Taliban leaders who are in our custody and being interrogated in Pakistan.”