Senior Taliban leader gives up to Pakistanis
KABUL, Afghanistan — A senior Taliban leader has surrendered to Pakistani authorities and another insurgent commander was killed by a British airstrike in southern Afghanistan, British officials announced Tuesday.
A suicide bomber blew himself up earlier in the day in the Afghan capital, wounding three civilians, while clashes in the country’s west prompted U. S.- led forces to use airstrikes on Taliban militants, officials said.
Lt. Col. Robin Matthews, a spokesman at the British Defense Ministry in London, said Mullah Rahim, the most senior Taliban leader in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, gave himself up to Pakistani officials Saturday.
He gave no other details, and there was no immediate confirmation from Pakistan.
Matthews also said a precision missile strike by British aircraft just after midnight Sunday killed Abdul Rasaq, a Taliban leader who led fighters in the Musa Qala area of Helmand province.
Rasaq, also known as Mullah Rahim, was the third senior Taliban leader to be killed by the British in recent months.
The British spokesman said the recent killings of top leaders was a blow to the insurgency but cautioned that Taliban fighters are still a threat.
“They remain a dangerous enemy, but they increasingly lack strategic direction, and their proposition to the Afghan people is proving ultimately negative and self-defeating,” Matthews said.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the bombing in Kabul on Tuesday. The suicide attacker set off his explosives next to the walls of the city’s historic Babur Gardens, a popular public park, police official Ali Shah Paktiawal said. The three wounded civilians were riding on a minibus, Paktiawal said.
In the fighting in the west, regional police spokesman Rauf Ahmadi said troops of the U. S.- led coalition and Afghan army called in airstrikes Tuesday against Taliban militants in the Bala Buluk district of Farah province.
The joint force has been battling militants there since Monday afternoon, he said. Tuesday’s fighting killed two police officers and wounded three, while some 25 militants were wounded or killed, he said.
Across the country in eastern Afghanistan, gunmen early Tuesday killed the spokesman for the governor of Paktika province, Ghamai Khan Mohammadyar, and wounded his wife, his brother and his mother.
More than 2,500 people have died in insurgency-related violence this year in Afghanistan, according to an Associated Press tally.
