|
Taliban leader: 'Fight back'
24/06/2003 12:13 - (SA)
Islamabad - The fugitive leader of the ousted Taliban regime, Mullah Mohammad Omar, has urged his followers to step up jihad (holy war) against the United States and other foreign occupation forces in Afghanistan, a Pakistani daily reported on Tuesday.
He issued the call in an audio tape sent from his hiding place in Afghanistan, the daily The News said, quoting Taliban spokesperson Mohammad Mukhtar Mujahid.
Omar has named a 10-member leadership council to organise the resistance against the US-led foreign troops, the spokesperson told the widely-read English language newspaper.
"Mullah Omar called upon the Taliban to offer sacrifices for evicting the American and allied soldiers from Afghanistan and fighting the puppet regime of (president) Hamid Karzai," Mujahid said.
The 10 men identified by Omar as members of the Rahbari Shura, or leadership council, included former Taliban military commanders - most veterans of the Afghan struggle against Soviet occupation troops between 1979-89, the report said.
Taliban regime military commander Jalaluddin Haqqani is on the council which is made up of commanders hailing from Kandahar, Helmand and other southwestern provinces where the Taliban had originally emerged in 1994, it said.
Two of the council members, Akhtar Mohammad Usmani, a confidante of Mullah Omar and one-legged former intelligence chief Mullah Dadullah, were on the Afghan government's wanted list that was given by Karzai to Pakistani authorities during his visit to Afghanistan in April.
US and allied troops have come under increasing attacks in recent months reportedly from remnants of the terror network al-Qaeda and the Taliban, who were ousted from power in late 2001.
|
News
