Kandahar, Afghanistan – Afghan forces have trapped up to 200 Taliban fighters in a southern village, possibly including the militia’s military commander, demanding they surrender or come under attack, Afghan officials said Monday.
Afghan police and government officials said the suspected Taliban fighters had 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.
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.
“We are trying to get him to surrender and to arrest these Taliban without fighting,” he said.
A Taliban spokesman in the south could not immediately be reached for comment. Khan said the Taliban fighters had gone into hiding in villagers’ homes.
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.
Mullah Omar’s whereabouts have remained a mystery ever since the U.S.-led invasion drove the Taliban from power in 2001.
In other violence, assailants blew up an Afghan intelligence-agency vehicle in eastern Laghman province on Monday, killing six employees and wounding three, said provincial police chief Abdul Karim. The bombing followed a similar attack the day before in which two intelligence officers, a soldier and a driver were killed in Meh- tar Lam, the provincial capital, officials said.
Separately, an intelligence-service employee was kidnapped and beheaded by suspected Taliban fighters at a home in Ghazni province, southwest of Kabul, said deputy governor Mohammad Kazim Allayar. He said the owner of the house was under investigation.
In southern Zabul province, a police patrol was struck by a roadside bomb, killing two policemen and wounding five others, said district chief Wazir Mohammad Khan.
