The US military is planning a "wanted" poster campaign in the hope of reeling in key figures behind deteriorating security in Afghanistan which has claimed dozens more lives, officials said Monday. Three of the dead were children, one a 15-year-old whom an Afghan official said was hanged by Taliban after a five-dollar note was found on him. Five Afghans working with the international community were meanwhile kidnapped.The posters and billboards, offering between 20,000 and 200,000 dollars for the capture of a dozen "wanted" Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters, will be put up in eastern Afghanistan, US Sergeant Dean Welch told AFP. "It is a campaign to put some people in the public view in the hope that maybe we can break up some mid-level Taliban cells," said Welch from the media office of the US-led coalition at Bagram, north of Kabul.
The east, along with the south, sees the worst of an insurgency led by the extremist Taliban movement which was in government between 1996 and 2001. With insurgency violence at its highest,
| Afghanistan and its international allies are debating talks with the rebels to end the killing which has already left 5,000 people dead this year, most of them rebels. |
The United Nations in Kabul said Monday it would support peace talks with insurgent leaders -- some of whom the United States has labelled "terrorists" -- but this did not mean they would be removed from a UN "blacklist." The UN Security Council's "Consolidated List" establishes travel, arms and other sanctions against 142 Taliban-linked individuals, including Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
Also on Sunday, a man was beheaded in the eastern border province of Paktika, provincial police chief Farouq Sangari said, also blaming Taliban fighters. Two children were killed and five wounded in the eastern province of Khost after playing a toy car that was really a bomb, provincial spokesman Wazir Padshah Mangal said. He said authorities suspected the bomb may have been planted by insurgents because "the father of the kids is working for the government."
At least eight policemen were meanwhile killed in intense fighting with Taliban insurgents in the southern province of Ghazni that started late Sunday and continued into early Monday, provincial police chief Alishah Ahmadzai said.
In Helmand, US-led coalition troops along with Afghan forces killed more than 20 Taliban rebels in an early morning raid on a suspected rebel hideout. Two more were killed in Zabul province and seven captured, the coalition said. In adjoining Uruzgan province, soldiers were ambushed by more than 30 insurgents Monday and repelled the attack with return fire and air strikes, killing "numerous insurgents," a coalition statement said.
Separately, two Afghans working for a Danish non-governmental organisation was kidnapped Sunday in Logar, adjoining Kabul. A Bangladishi development worker was abducted in the same area September 15. Three Afghan drivers of trucks supplying foreign military bases were kidnapped Monday in Wardak, also near Kabul, according to officials. The Taliban claimed responsibility.