KABUL/ISLAMABAD (Islamweb & News Agencies) - Afghanistan's Taliban rulers said on Thursday they had arrested several U.S. citizens but the announcement shed no light on who they were or what they were doing.``We have a few American citizens with us. They have been arrested,'' Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef said.
``Their identities are not known so far. The investigation is going on,'' he told a news conference in Islamabad.
In Kabul, Taliban said they repulsed the first joint air and ground attack by U.S. and opposition forces in the north but lost a hydropower plant to U.S. bombing in the south.
The air raids blacked out Afghanistan's second city, Kandahar, which is the powerbase of Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
The envoy, the isolated Taliban's sole foreign ambassador, said he had no information on how or when the U.S. citizens were detained.
Some media reported that Americans had been captured when Afghan mujahideen commander Abdul Haq, who crossed secretly into Afghanistan to raise rebellion, was seized by Taliban forces and summarily executed last week.
There was no independent confirmation of those reports. Haq, a Pashtun warlord and veteran anti-Soviet guerrilla, called on his satellite phone for U.S. air support when he was cornered.
The Taliban said on Saturday they were searching for a man believed to be an American, who had been traveling with Haq.
``He was spotted with Abdul Haq and as far as we know his name is Jamber Jihi,'' Information Ministry spokesman Abdul Hanan Himat told Reuters last week.
PHOTO CAPTION:
A US Navy ordnance crewman works on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson as the sun sets October 31, 2001 somewhere in the Arabian Sea. Afghanistan's Taliban militia said November 1 that they repulsed the first joint air and ground attack by U.S. and opposition forces in the north but lost a hydropower plant to U.S. bombing in the south. (Jim Hollander/Reuters)