Senior Taliban Commander Captured

Pakistani security forces critically wounded a top figure in the Taliban militia fighting U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, among six militants captured after a firefight near the border Monday, the army said.

Earlier, a senior military official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to journalists, said Mullah Mansoor Dadullah died of his wounds while being flown to a hospital with the other injured men.

Mullah Mansoor Dadullah, brother of the Taliban's slain military commander Mullah Dadullah, and the five others were challenged by security forces as they crossed from Afghanistan into Pakistan's southwestern province of Baluchistan. They refused to stop and opened fire, said army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas.

"Security personnel returned fire. As a result all of them sustained injuries and all of them were captured," Abbas said. "Dadullah was arrested alive but he is critically wounded."

CBS News was working Monday to confirm the reports of his arrest. Contacted by CBS, Mansoor Dadullah's spokesman said only that he had been "out of contact" since Sunday, but he could not confirm whether he was dead or alive.

Mansoor Dadullah's arrest would mark a highly significant score against the Taliban and its al Qaeda allies in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Sometimes at odds with other Taliban leaders, due in part to his close ties and public appearances with al Qaeda figures, Mansoor Dadullah is seen as a powerful figure in southern Afghanistan, where he is believed to control about 120 subcommanders and hundreds of fighters.

Mansoor Dadullah's spokesman and a subcommander told CBS News on January 23 that he had narrowly escaped an attack by the Pakistani security forces about a week earlier near the Afghan border. He escaped that strike unharmed, according to the sources.

The reported arrest on Monday comes less than two months after a Taliban spokesman told several media outlets that Mansoor Dadullah had been forced out of his prominent role as military commander in the hard-line movement's "southern zone" of Afghanistan by Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar.

"Mullah Mansoor Dadullah has been dismissed as the Taliban commander because he disobeyed the orders of the Islamic Emirate," Zabihullah Mujaheed said in the statement obtained by the AFP news agency at the end of December.

CBSNews.com reported in Sept. 2007 that Dadullah was facing opposition from many members of the Taliban's 30-member Supreme Council, who had grown wary of the militant's close ties to al Qaeda and his refusal to negotiate with the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Mansoor Dadullah's spokesman, Shabudin Atal, told CBS News near the end of January that his boss didn't believe he had actually been fired by the supreme leader, but "if he does come to understand that, he will not mind, and would serve as foot solder - not as commander."

Taliban sources said then that Mansoor Dadullah was likely dismissed over an internal tussle with Mullah Bradar, who is know to be a close personal friend of Omar's and is reportedly acting as the supreme leader's deputy.

Well-known Taliban spokesman Qari Yusef Ahmadi told broadcaster Radio Free Afghanistan in Sept. 2007 that Bradar was to lead a new offensive in southern Afghanistan.