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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, September 18, 2002

Afghan Official Says Taliban Ex-governor Arrested

Afghan authorities in the southern province of Kandahar have arrested a senior Taliban official and three of his aides, a local official said Wednesday.


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Afghan authorities in the southern province of Kandahar have arrested a senior Taliban official and three of his aides, a local official said Wednesday.

Mullah Sher Mohammad Malang, governor of the southwestern province of Nimruz during Taliban rule, and his aides were caught in a raid on a mosque in Kandahar city last week, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

He said all four had been handed over to U.S. forces in Kandahar, a former bastion of the radical Taliban movement which was overthrown late last year after U.S. air strikes and a ground offensive by anti-Taliban Afghan forces.

The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press said U.S. and Afghan forces launched a joint operation Monday night in the Band-e-Taimour area, 40 miles west of Kandahar, for Taliban remnants and their al Qaeda allies.

The independent agency quoted unnamed sources as saying that they had arrested six Afghans on suspicion of being al Qaeda men.

U.S.-led forces have been in Afghanistan since last year hunting remnants of the Taliban and their al Qaeda militant allies, blamed for the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

The whereabouts of the Taliban's top leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, and al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, whom Washington accuses of masterminding the attacks on Washington and New York, are not known.

Mohammad Arif Noorzaye, Afghan minister for tribal and frontier affairs, told Reuters in an interview Sunday that the one-eyed Omar was alive and regrouping his supporters to destabilize the central government.

Last Thursday, the Arabic al Jazeera television station said it had received a statement from Omar, in which he vowed his movement would not rest until it had ousted U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

U.S. officials have put out conflicting suggestions on bin Laden's fate. Some say he was probably killed in air strikes, while others say he may have fled Afghanistan, perhaps to neighboring Pakistan.

Source: Agencies


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