Three Taliban who had been released from prison in exchange for a kidnapped Italian journalist were killed alongside the insurgencyÂ’s top field commander over the weekend, the Afghan intelligence service said on Wednesday.Mullah Dadullah, a militant who orchestrated a rash of Taliban suicide attacks and beheadings, died of gunshot wounds in a US-led operation over the weekend in the southern province of Helmand. An official with AfghanistanÂ’s intelligence service identified the three others as Mullah Shah Mansoor, DadullahÂ’s brother, Mullah Hamdullah and Commander Ghafar. They had been freed in March in a prisoner swap for the release of Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo.
US-led coalition forces, with assistance from NATO and Afghan forces, were able to track them to the village of Sarwan using “modern technology,” said the official, reading an intelligence service statement. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the agency’s policy. A NATO spokeswoman said the coalition would not have been able to kill the Taliban’s top field commander without the help of Afghan civilians and security forces, whose intelligence helped track him down, but gave no details.
The Taliban has lost most of its top commanders over the last year and NATO’s International Security Assistance Force anticipates the Taliban’s operational coherence and morale will suffer as a result, spokeswoman Lt Col Maria Carl said. Afghan national security forces “made this operation possible, and their efforts are largely responsible for the death of (Mullah Dadullah) - this is their success,” Carl told a news conference. Carl said NATO forces tracked Dadullah to southern Afghanistan. “Not long after Mullah Dadullah showed up in the southern part of Afghanistan, he was found and killed in an assault by mainly coalition forces, with ISAF and (Afghan) assets in support,” Carl said. “This will likely be a serious disruption to the extremists’ efforts to terrorize the Afghan people. But we also know that it does not mean the end of the insurgency by any means,” Carl said.
Afghan Defence Ministry spokesman Gen Zahir Azimi said the Afghan people had a “great role in cooperating with the government” in the operation to kill Dadullah, but he declined to give any further details. He said the government was “keeping their intelligence information secret”.
Separately, a soldier with the US-led coalition died from his injuries after being attacked while returning from a medical assistance mission in southern Afghanistan, the force said on Wednesday.