Posted on 12/21/2003 5:48:30 AM PST by knighthawk
Afghan authorities have arrested and handed over to US forces a Taliban official suspected of orchestrating raids in which two dozen people, including aid workers, have died, officials said on Sunday.
Mohammad Younis, former chief of the ousted Taliban's customs department at Kabul airport, was captured from his home in Nawzad district in the southern province of Helmand during a raid on Saturday, they said.
"We then handed him over to the Americans who had requested it," Helmand's intelligence chief, Dad Mohammad Khan, said.
"We suspect that Younis has been leading the attacks in various parts of Helmand. But we have to prove that and it is too early to say anything as the Americans have not finished questioning him."
Attacks in Helmand in the past five months have claimed the lives of Afghan security forces and several local aid workers, some serving for western aid groups, he said.
Helmand was once a stronghold of the Taliban militia overthrown by US-led forces in 2001 for harbouring Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network.
The raids there are part of a wave of violence in which more than 400 people, including civilians, aid workers, militants, Afghan forces and more than a dozen US-led troops have been killed, mainly in the south and east since August.
Some of the militants arrested and handed to the 12,000-strong US-led force are in American custody in Afghanistan while others are in being held in Guantanamo Bay.
In a separate incident, several civilians were wounded when an explosive device went off near a hotel outside the eastern city of Jalalabad on Friday night, officials said, blaming militants for the attack.
That was George Bush's fault.
I burned my toast this morning.
That was George Bush's fault.
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