One of the leading figures in Pakistan's Taliban insurgency was believed killed during a clash with the police in Afghanistan, the authorities in Nuristan Province said Thursday.The figure was said to be Maulana Fazlullah, leader of the Taliban uprising in Pakistan's Swat Valley, who fled to Afghanistan after a Pakistani counteroffensive wrested the valley from Taliban control. The Pakistanis had offered a bounty of about $600,000 for his capture.
Gen. Zaman Mamozai, head of the Afghan Border Police in eastern Nuristan Province, said the authorities believed Mr. Fazlullah was one of seven Taliban militants killed in the Barg-e-Matal District in a clash with the border police, but they were awaiting forensic identification of his remains to be certain. Police officials recovered the seven bodies, he said.
General Mamozai said the fighting, which had still not ended late Thursday, began when a group of 400 to 500 fighters, composed largely of Pakistani Taliban militants, with some Arabs fighting for Al Qaeda and some Afghan insurgents, attacked the district center in Barg-e-Matal on Monday but were repulsed. One border police officer was killed and another wounded, he said.
The Taliban continued counterattacking in the remote and roadless district, which was abandoned by American ground forces last year as part of the military's plan to concentrate on more heavily populated areas. According to the Nuristan provincial police chief, Gen. Qasim, the militants' bodies were recovered after another counterattack that began late Wednesday night and ended at dawn, involving what he said were 500 attackers, including Pakistanis as well as Chechens and Arabs.
"We could not defeat them ourselves because we had fewer border police," said General Qasim, who like many Afghans uses only one name. The defenders consisted of a battalion of 200 officers from the border police and 250 from the national police. General Qasim said that local residents took up arms to support the police because they were enraged by reports that Mr. Fazlullah had called for all fighting-age men in the district to be killed and their women taken prisoner.
Mr. Fazlullah's death had previously been reported, last year in Afghanistan, but was later refuted. If confirmed this time, he would be the highest ranking Pakistani Taliban leader killed since last August.
"Serious fighting is still going on so we haven't been able to take their bodies for forensic identification," General Mamozai said. "The enemies are using rockets and mortars to shoot at us." He said the authorities had intercepted Taliban radio communications confirming Mr. Fazlullah's death.
General Mamozai said that Mr. Fazlullah's second in command from Swat, a man known only as Hakimullah, was also reported among the militants whose bodies were recovered.
Last August, a missile fired from a C.I.A. drone killed Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, when it destroyed a house in South Waziristan, also killing his wife and other family members, the authorities said at the time; the Taliban later confirmed the deaths.
His successor as the Pakistan Taliban leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, was also reported killed in a drone strike last January, but a videotaped message from him surfaced months later denying that.
Mr. Fazlullah, believed to be in his 20s, was a former ski lift operator and the son of a radical imam. Nicknamed "Radio Mullah," he is known for his jihadist oratory broadcast over clandestine radio stations, and his image as a brave fighter attracted thousands of recruits to the Taliban cause in Swat. At one time, 4,500 Taliban militants, taking advantage of a peace agreement with the Pakistani authorities, set up a parallel government in the rugged Swat Valley, imposing harsh Islamic law on the local residents.
