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 were surrounded as they 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 when the village was surrounded. The security forces were still positioned around the village on Monday, he said.
"We are trying to get him to surrender and to arrest these Taliban without fighting," he said.
Abdul Hadi Khalid, the deputy interior minister for security, told a security commission in parliament on Monday that it was "possible that Mullah Dadullah is among" those who were attending the meeting. He said Afghan officials had demanded that the Taliban surrender or face military action. He did not mention any deadline for negotiations.
Hiding in homes?
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.
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 Mehtar Lam, the provincial capital, officials said.
Taliban suspected in beheading
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.
Intelligence officers, meanwhile, discovered a large car bomb in a battered old taxi parked in a crowded civilian area in Kabul where NATO and U.S. convoys often drive past.
Authorities found a tank of gasoline, three gallons of explosive chemicals, three grenades and a mortar inside the car, an official said on condition of anonymity because of agency policy. The bomb was safely removed, the official said.
There have been at least three suicide bomb attacks in Kabul this year, and more than 40 nationwide, mostly in the south and east, a threefold increase on the same period in 2006.
