Taliban Claim To have Arrested Traitor

Slain leader’s betrayer captured, claim Taliban
19 May, 2007
Gulf Times
KANDAHAR: The Taliban yesterday said it had arrested a close aide to the rebel movement’s slain commander Mullah Dadullah for treachery that led to his killing.

“We have captured the spy who helped US forces kill Mullah Dadullah,” Taliban spokesman Shohabudin Atal said from an undisclosed location.

Dadullah, known as the Taliban’s top military strategist, was killed in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province last Friday in a joint Afghan and international operation.

One-legged Dadullah was the most senior Taliban figure to be killed since the 2001 toppling of the group’s government.

Spokesman Atal declined to disclose the name of the captured man but said Dadullah had stopped at the house of the suspect in Helmand’s Bahramcha district when he came under attack from coalition forces.

Atal said the fate of the suspected informer was undecided, but the militants have previously executed people they have accused of spying for foreign forces operating in the country.

The spokesman said Dadullah’s body was removed by his fighters but the same suspect passed on the information to coalition forces, who moved in and seized the corpse, which was later displayed to the media.

Asked how the rebels knew the man was a spy, Atal said: “Each time there was a (coalition) strike the man would disappear and then reappear after the bombing was over.”

Atal said the man had confessed to being a spy for the US.

The Afghan national intelligence department in Kabul said Wednesday the rebel commander was tracked “with (the) most modern intelligence technology from the Pakistani border before being killed.”

Nato forces, which helped in the operation, said “as soon as we had information he was in the country, we pinpointed him very well and we started tracking him.” – AFP

67 Taliban Killed in Ambush

Let’s hear it for our boyz!!!

Dozens of Taliban fighters killed in ambush
Khost, Afghanistan
19 May 2007

mail&Guardian online
Nearly 70 Taliban militants were killed in an ambush by United States-led forces and Afghan soldiers in eastern Afghanistan, a military commander said on Saturday.

The rebels were killed late on Friday in Paktia province near the border with Pakistan, Afghan army General Sami-Ul Haq Badar said.

“We set an ambush, attacked them and killed 67 Taliban. Their bodies were lying on the ground,” he said.

The general said the soldiers had been tipped off that there were Taliban in the area. No Afghan or foreign soldiers were hurt in the gunfight, which lasted several hours, he said.