Afghan forces have trapped up to 200 Taliban fighters in a southern village, possibly including the militia's military commander, (Mullah Dadullah?)
demanding they surrender or come under attack, Afghan officials said Monday. Afghan police and government officials said the suspected Taliban fighters were surrounded as they gathered for a meeting in the mountain village of Keshay in Uruzgan province on Saturday.
Provincial police chief Gen. Mohammad Qasim Khan said NATO troops were also involved in the siege, but NATO spokeswoman Lt. Col. Angela Billings said she had no such information.
Yup.
Khan told The Associated Press that Mullah Dadullah, a close aide to Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar, and other regional Taliban commanders were at the meeting when the village was surrounded. The security forces were still positioned around the village on Monday, he said. "We are trying to get him to surrender and to arrest these Taliban without fighting," he said.
Why? Whack the whole bunch.
Abdul Hadi Khalid, the deputy interior minister for security, told a security commission in parliament on Monday that it was "possible that Mullah Dadullah is among" those who were attending the meeting. He said Afghan officials had demanded that the Taliban surrender or face military action. He did not mention any deadline for negotiations. A Taliban spokesman in the south could not immediately be reached for comment.
He's at the meeting, too?
Khan said the Taliban fighters had gone into hiding in villagers' homes.
"Wot the...? Hey! Youse can't come in here!"
"Shuddup! Where's yer wife's clothes?"
After a winter lull in violence, Afghan, NATO and U.S.-led forces have stepped up operations in recent weeks, hoping to pre-empt a feared spring offensive by militants that threatened the already shaky grip of President Hamid Karzai's government. Killing or capturing Dadullah would be a major victory for the Afghan government and its foreign backers. A NATO airstrike killed senior Taliban commander Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani in southern Helmand province in December.
KANDAHAR A NATO air strike early Wednesday destroyed a compound housing a Taliban leader responsible for a wave of violence across southern Afghanistan, the Western alliance said. NATO said it believed it killed a Taliban leader linked to an uprising in the nearby town of Musa Qala, which the Taliban overran on Feb. 1, and to an attack Tuesday against a dam in nearby Kajaki.