AFGHANISTAN: U.S. forces say they had killed the Taliban's military chief Akhtar Mohammad Osmani in southern Afghanistan

U.S. forces said on Saturday (December 23) they had killed the Taliban's military chief in southern Afghanistan, where the insurgency is at its bloodiest, the most senior rebel leader killed yet. Akhtar Mohammad Osmani and two other guerrillas were killed in an air strike on their car on an isolated desert road on Tuesday, spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition force, Colonel Tom Collins, said in Kabul. "Mullah Osmani is the highest ranking Taliban leader that we've ever killed, he was the chief of the Taliban military operation, so his death is very significant and will hurt the Taliban's operations. They will no doubt reconstitute his position, they'll put somebody else in that role who'll take a while to get up to speed. But Osmani was an associate of Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar and Hekmatyar. He had built up relationship with key figures in their terrorist organizations, so replacing him will be very difficult ."said U.S coalition spokesman Thomas Collins. The Taliban said Osmani, once annointed by the group's leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, as his heir, was alive. "We strongly deny this. He is not present in the area where American forces are claiming to have killed him," commander Mullah Hayat Khan told Reuters by telephone. "The American and NATO forces from time to time make such false claims. It's just propaganda against the Taliban." Osmani controls the Taliban's fighting machine in six provinces in its southern heartland, including Helmand and Kandahar where foreign troops, mainly British and Canadian, have suffered their worst casualties this year. Osmani was also close to Osama bin Laden and helped coordinate relations with al Qaeda and other militant groups. "It is a big loss for the Taliban. There is no doubt that it's going to have an immediate impact on their ability to conduct attacks. But the Taliban is also fairly adaptive. They'll put somebody else into that position we'll go after that person too," said Collins Collins said Osmani's car was destroyed in the attack in Helmand and the U.S. coalition had taken four days to check intelligence and other sources. "We're sure that we killed Osmani. He was killed on the 19th (December). We've made the announcement four days later -- we took that time to gain intelligence to make sure that it was him that we had killed." Said Collins in Kabul. Neither the U.S. comments nor the Taliban's could be independently verified. Another Taliban spokesman said three men were killed in Tuesday's attack, but not Osmani. This has been the bloodiest year since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban's hardline government in 2001. More than 4,000 people have died and the worst fighting has been in the provinces under Osmani's command. In an interview with private Pakistan television station GEO broadcast on June 15, 2005, Osmani accused U.S. President George W. Bush of being responsible for the deaths of more than 200,000 Iraqis, and said 20,000 Afghans have died in the bloodshed between the United States and the Taliban. A video obtained by Reuters on Monday (December 18) shows what are believed to be Taliban fighters preparing remote controlled bombs and carrying out attacks on U.S. troops in Afghanistan's Khost and Kunar provinces. The video features an Al Sahab logo, a media group that previously produced several al Qaeda videos. What appears to be a U.S. armoured Humvee drives down a dirt road. As it crosses a dry river bed and starts driving up a hill, a large blast flips the vehicle over. Another vehicles drives past a village, when it gets hit by a second blast. The video also shows Taliban fighters preparing bombs, firing mortars. It wasn't clear when the video was shot. Reuters could not verify its authenticity.

ITN Source | December 23, 2006

Tags:. .destroyed. .iraqis. .gain. .commander. .replacing