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A NATO air strike has killed a Taliban commander behind an insurgent takeover of a small southern Afghanistan town, as a US general took command of the 35,000-strong NATO-led force.
A Taliban spokesman said meanwhile the fighters were ready to “hand over” the town of of Musa Qala, which they captured overnight Friday, if the government and foreign forces agreed “they won't bomb again.”
Mullah Abdul Ghafour and “some of his aides” were killed in the strike near the town in the province of Helmand, the interior ministry said in a statement that described the death as a “major achievement.”
The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) did not immediately release the name of the slain insurgent but said he was “directly responsible” for the “uprising” in Musa Qala.
Taliban fighters attacked the town late Thursday, disarming police and occupying the district administration headquarters. They appeared to still be in the town Sunday.
A police officer in hiding after Taliban captured the town also told AFP the dead man was Ghafour, one of four top Taliban commanders in the area.
Ghafour had led the attack on the town after his brother was killed in an ISAF strike late last month, the officer said on condition of anonymity.
“He had arrived to visit a Taliban position being fortified in his Landcruiser vehicle as he was targeted and killed,” he said, adding 10 other men were also killed. The toll was not confirmed.
ISAF spokesman Squadron Leader Dave Marsh said the insurgent was “targeted in a precisely planned and well-executed operation while driving his vehicle in an isolated area outside the village of Musa Qala.”
A Taliban spokesman confirmed that some of the movement's fighters were hit but said “no famous and big Taliban commander was killed in the strike.”
“There has been some casualties among civilians because it was close to a village,” Yousuf Ahmadi said, but this was not confirmed.
Ahmadi told AFP by telephone that the Taliban was ready to “hand over” the town to tribal elders “if the Americans and the government give a strong, reliable guarantee to the tribal elders that they won't bomb and attack Musa Qala again.”
Hundreds of civilians have fled the town over the past few days fearing fighting between the military forces and Taliban, who had vowed Saturday to resist and bring in reinforcements from other districts if necessary.
Under a controversial deal reached in September, British forces that cover Helmand province agreed to keep outside of a five-kilometre (three-mile) radius around Musa Qala after tribal leaders said they would handle the Taliban.
The rebels have alleged ISAF violated the deal with an air strike last week which the force said killed Taliban fighters. Police said Ghafour's brother was among the dead.
ISAF insists the strike was outside the exclusion zone. Sunday's strike was however within the zone but was carried out with the permission of the Afghan government, spokesman Colonel Thomas Collins said.
Afghan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta said meanwhile he had been suspicious of the deal “from the beginning.”
“We cannot have fundamentalist and terrorist reserves and islands. This is not at the interests of establishing a strong, powerful government,” he said in Kabul.
Security in Musa Qala and other northern parts of Helmand province, which is covered by the nearly 6,000-strong British deployment, is fragile with several major clashes last year.
The province produces about a quarter of Afghanistan's world-leading crop of illegal opium, the key ingredient of heroin and said to be a source of Taliban funding.
The extremist religious movement was toppled from power in late 2001 in a US-led invasion and has since waged an increasingly bloody insurgency.
The unrest was its deadliest last year with more than 4,000 people killed — most of them rebels.
The 37-nation ISAF came under the command of US General Dan McNeill Sunday after nine months with British General David Richards at the helm.
“We will quit neither post nor mission until the job is done or we are properly relieved,” McNeill said at a handover ceremony in Kabul attended by President Hamid Karzai.
