Pakistan: Taliban leader caught along border

Khan, the candidate for parliament supported by the Awami National Party, was campaigning in North Waziristan when he was wounded and his supporters were killed, authorities said.

Intelligence officials initially said he was killed.

But Afrasiab Khattak, a senior party official in the area, said Khan was hurt and that at least seven other people, including a local ANP leader, were killed.

Khan “is injured, but in stable condition and we spoke to him on the phone,” Khattak told The Associated Press.

An intelligence official in the main northwestern city of Peshawar said the initial report he received in the aftermath of the attack was that Khan was dead. But later, the official said, he learned that the candidate had survived. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media.

Mountainous tribal regions bordering Afghanistan are known to harbor al-Qaida- and Taliban-linked militants. The Pakistani government’s control of the region is weak and communications are poor.

The Awami National Party is a secular party of ethnic Pashtuns seen as a rival to hard-line Islamic groups.

In July 2007, another prominent militant, Abdullah Mehsud, died in Zhob, apparently after he was cornered by Pakistani security forces. Mehsud was a Taliban veteran of Guantanamo Bay who began fighting Pakistani security forces after his release from the U.S. prison for terror suspects in 2004.

In March 2007, two months before Mullah Dadullah was killed in Helmand, Mullah Obaidullah Akhund, one of the two top deputies of Taliban supreme leader Omar, was arrested in Quetta — where Afghan officials claim Omar is hiding.

In December 2006, another top Omar lieutenant, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Osmani, died in a NATO airstrike in Helmand, near the Pakistan border.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, held talks over the weekend with President Pervez Musharraf and Pakistani military chiefs, and told reporters that the militant threat in the country’s border regions was growing. But he ruled out violating Pakistan’s sovereignty by sending U.S. forces to fight there.

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