ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistani authorities said Monday that they had captured a senior Taliban commander, critically wounding him in a shootout after he crossed into Pakistan from southern Afghanistan.
Mansoor Dadullah, whose more prominent brother Mullah Dadullah was killed by U.S. forces last year in Afghanistan, was captured after he and some fighters encountered Pakistani troops in the southwest province of Baluchistan, the Pakistani army said.
Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said Dadullah was badly wounded in an ensuing firefight. Several soldiers were hurt as well, he said.
Pressure from U.S.
Dadullah’s capture comes amid heavy pressure on Pakistan by senior U.S. officials to go after senior figures in the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Saturday, the visiting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen, said the threat posed by militants sheltering in Pakistan’s tribal belt was growing.
The government of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf acknowledges that some militants are operating in the tribal areas abutting the Afghan border but bristles at assertions by U.S. officials that figures such as Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar are hiding inside Pakistan.
It was not clear whether Mansoor Dadullah, who stepped in when his brother was killed, still held an important position within the Taliban. Reports had circulated in December that he was dismissed from a command role.
His brother, by contrast, was an uncontested leader and the highest-ranking Taliban commander to have been killed by allied forces since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.
Ambassador missing
Elsewhere in the volatile border region, the Pakistani ambassador to Afghanistan was reported missing and feared kidnapped in the Khyber tribal area of Pakistan. The envoy, Tariq Azizuddin, had intended to travel by road to the Afghan capital, Kabul.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility in his disappearance, but two Pakistani nationals working for the International Committee of the Red Cross vanished in the same area last week while traveling the main highway from Peshawar to the border.
Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry refused to comment on the ambassador’s disappearance.
The latest violence in the border region has been fueled not only by the government’s battle with Islamic insurgents but by Pakistani parliamentary elections a week away.
A politician linked to the Awami National Party was wounded and six other people were killed when a suicide bomber attacked a gathering of tribal elders in North Waziristan, authorities said.
The Awami National Party, which is competing with Islamic parties for support among ethnic Pashtun voters, has repeatedly come under attack by suspected militants. A suicide bomber killed at least 29 people at a party rally Saturday in the town of Charsadda, outside Peshawar.
The wounded politician, Nisar Ali Khan, is a party leader, although he is running as an independent.
