WASHINGTON (Islamweb & News Agencies) - A top leader of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda guerrilla network has been captured, a senior U.S. official said on Thursday, and the Pentagon claimed Taliban control over their troops has been fractured.
About 1,000 U.S. Marines were based at a desert airstrip outside the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, while dozens of troops from the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division were on the ground in the north, preparing air bases for humanitarian and possibly military missions.
A U.S. soldier based in Uzbekistan died Thursday, becoming the sixth known death of an American in Afghanistan and the surrounding region since the so-called war on terrorism began on Oct. 7. The Pentagon withheld the soldier's name but said the death was not due to enemy action.
A senior U.S. official speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed reports that the Northern Alliance has captured Ahmed Omar Abdel Rahman, who has been described as a charismatic guerrilla training leader for bin Laden, the Saudi fugitive Washington blames for fatal Sept. 11 attacks at New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The 35-year-old Rahman is the son of Muslim cleric Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, who with nine other militant Muslims was convicted on charges stemming from a deadly 1993 car bombing of the World Trade Center.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Rahman was being held by Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan.
At a Pentagon briefing, U.S. Navy Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem told reporters that Taliban leaders' control over their troops in Afghanistan had been ``in a word -- fractured.''
But Stufflebeem and Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said they had no evidence to support claims that opposition forces were moving against Kandahar.
Despite the fall of Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz and other cities in Afghanistan to opposition control, Mullah Omar has urged his forces to continue to fight in Kandahar.
But Stufflebeem, a senior official on the U.S. military's Joint Staff, suggested Omar and others could rapidly lose control of their troops.