Pakistanis arrest 5 suspects; "Taliban gloomy" By Gul Yousafzai
QUETTA, Pakistan, March 4 (Reuters) - Pakistani police arrested five suspected Afghan militants in a raid in the city of Quetta and a Pakistani newspaper said on Sunday the Taliban had conceded the arrest last week of one of their top leaders.
The five suspected militants were among 32 Afghans rounded up in the southwestern city where Pakistani security officials said senior Taliban leader Mullah Obaidullah Akhund was arrested last Monday.
"They are Afghans aged between 20 and 25 and they came from Waziristan," senior Quetta police officer Qazi Abdul Wahid said, referring to a volatile Pakistani region on the Afghan border where Taliban and al Qaeda operate.
Wahid did not say if the five were members of the Taliban but said they were seized with compromising Islamist documents. They were being interrogated, he said.
He said 27 other Afghans had been picked up in raids in the city on Saturday night and also were being questioned.
The Afghan government and foreign officials in Kabul have long said the Taliban were organising their insurgency against the Afghan government from Quetta, capital of Baluchistan province, which borders Afghanistan.
The insurgents have threatened to unleash a spring offensive in Afghanistan in coming weeks after the bloodiest year since their ouster in 2001.
Pakistan has been coming under mounting pressure from the United States and other Western governments with troops in Afghanistan to take action against Taliban operating from sanctuaries on the Pakistani side of the border.
Akhund's arrest came hours after a visit to Pakistan by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney in which he asked Pakistan to do more against the Taliban.
"GLOOM"
The Pakistani government has not confirmed the arrest of the former Taliban defence minister, and a top member of the insurgents' leadership council.
Officials say the government is worried about a backlash from militants and Islamist political parties bitterly opposed to President Pervez Musharraf's alliance with the United States in its war on terrorism.
Taliban spokesman have denied Akhund was captured, but Pakistan's the News newspaper said a top Taliban commander and some Taliban officials reluctantly admitted reports of his arrest appeared to be true.
A Taliban official told the newspaper: "There is gloom in our ranks. It would take some time to overcome the shock of the arrest."
In Quetta, extra security forces has been deployed at government buildings and in various public places.
Pakistan has been in the grip of a security scare as militant groups sympathetic to al Qaeda and the Taliban have carried out a series of suicide and bomb attacks in various cities following a mid-January air strike on militant compounds in Waziristan.
Separately, suspected pro-Taliban militants blew up a barber shop and a music shop in Pakistan's Bajaur tribal region on the Afghan border for violating orders to cease "un-Islamic" practices, officials and witnesses said.
No one was hurt in the Saturday night explosions, they said.
Under the austere version of religion followed by the Taliban, shaving and music are counter to Islam. Militants have warned barbers and shops selling music and video tapes to close.
A border security official in Pakistan's far southwest said authorities had arrested five foreign militants on Saturday in the city of Tuftan near the Iranian border.
The five -- from Russia, Turkey and Kyrgyzstan -- were arrested after crossing from Iran, the border official said.
(Additional reporting by Kamran Haider)