Afghanistan's government has no information on whether a wanted guerrilla leader was in a village hit by a U.S.-led air strike in the east of the country this week, a spokesman said on Tuesday.| Boy am I ever going to ululate the day this clown gets whacked. Not as much as the day Uday and Qasay were whacked, but pretty close. |
| I'll ululate more, but then, I've known him longer. |
Asked about a report that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a fugitive pro-Taliban insurgent leader wanted by the United States, was the target of the attack, a presidential spokesman said the guerrilla leader's whereabouts were unknown. "We have no precise information whether Hekmatyar was there or not ... we are not aware as to where Hekmatyar is," presidential spokesman Humayun Hamidzada told a regular briefing.
The air strike was part of an operation involving Afghan and U.S.-led troops against suspected militants in the rugged region near the Pakistani border where Hekmatyar's followers are active. Nuristan's governor was cited as saying Hekmatyar was believed to have been at a meeting in the village. Hekmatyar was a prominent commander during the war against Soviet occupation in the 1980s and factional warring in the 1990s.
Security analysts said it was doubtful Hekmatyar would have been in the area and a spokesman for the militant commander said the report he might have been in the area was false. "Hekmatyar has never been to the area where coalition forces conducted the operation," the spokesman, Hassan Ansari, told the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency.