Taliban commander killed in Afghanistan

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Afghan security forces killed a senior Taliban commander and two of his comrades in southern Afghanistan, an official said Sunday.

Maulvi Abdul Ghaffar, a former inmate at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, died in a gun battle Saturday night in Pishi village in the southern province of Uruzgan, said Jan Mohammed Khan, governor of Uruzgan.

Khan said authorities had received intelligence that Ghaffar was hiding in the village and was planning an attack against the government. Security forces launched a raid after surrounding a house, and three men, including Ghaffar, were killed in gunfire. None of the security forces was hurt.

The governor said Ghaffar had been a senior Taliban commander in northern Afghanistan and was arrested about two months after a U.S.-led coalition drove the militia out of power in late 2001. After being held for eight months in Guantanamo, he was released and returned to Afghanistan.

Khan said Ghaffar was then appointed as the leader of Taliban fighters in Uruzgan, a rugged region believed to be a stronghold of the hardline Islamic militia.

The U.S. military said it could not yet confirm the report.

Taliban-led insurgents are active in much of southern and eastern Afghanistan and frequently launch attacks on the U.S.-backed government despite the deployment of thousands of U.S. forces to hunt them down. Officials are predicting an upsurge in violence before landmark presidential elections on Oct. 9.

On Saturday also in Uruzgan, suspected Taliban rebels attacked a convoy of coalition and Afghan forces, who were on patrol ahead of the elections, Khan said.

The rebels opened fire on a vehicle carrying Char Cheno district chief Wali Jan, killing him and seriously injuring two Afghan soldiers in the Yakhdan area, he said. The rebels fled into surrounding mountains after the attack.

No coalition forces were hurt, Khan said.

Maj. Mark McCann, a U.S. military spokesman in Kabul, confirmed the attack on the convoy near Deh Rawood in which one district official was killed and three other Afghans wounded, but had no details on the identity of the official.

Officials say it is common for district and local police chiefs with a knowledge of the terrain to accompany coalition forces on patrol in remote areas of Afghanistan.