Taliban Military Leader Is Killed

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, May 13 -- Mullah Dadullah was the face of the Taliban movement in Afghanistan as it used suicide bombings, videotaped beheadings and targeted assassinations to escalate its insurgent campaign over the past two years.

Dadullah periodically turned up on television to taunt the Afghan government and U.S.-led international forces with threats of ever more ambitious attacks.

On Sunday, his face was on display again, resting on a pink sheet, bloody and lifeless. A bullet hole was visible in the back of his head, with two more piercings in his stomach.

Dadullah, the Taliban's top operational commander, was killed Saturday after U.S.-led troops and Afghan forces tracked him down and surrounded him in southern Afghanistan, according to Afghan and international security officials.

His death was hailed by those officials as a critical victory in the fight against the Taliban at a time when the extremist Islamic movement has destabilized large portions of the country through Dadullah's uncompromising approach to warfare.

"We fully expect Mullah Dadullah will be replaced in time, but for now the insurgency has received a serious blow," said Maj. John Thomas, a spokesman for the NATO-led force that patrols Afghanistan and that supported U.S.-led operations against Dadullah.

Thomas described Dadullah as "the top person in our scope in Afghanistan that we were interested in removing."

It was unclear who would replace Dadullah. Another top leader, Akhter Mohammed Osmani, was killed in December, and a third, Obaidullah Akhund, was captured in February. Although the group's overall leader, Mohammad Omar, remains at large, he is believed to play a lesser role in the organization's military operations.

A Taliban spokesman denied that Dadullah had been killed, but witnesses who inspected the body as it lay at the governor's palace in the southern city of Kandahar on Sunday identified it as Dadullah's, based on distinctive facial features and a missing left leg.

Last year was the bloodiest in Afghanistan since the Taliban was ousted in a U.S.-led invasion in late 2001, and the number of civilian deaths rose dramatically. Dadullah boasted in an interview this year that he had deployed 6,000 fighters for a spring offensive and that suicide bombers had infiltrated every major Afghan city. Those claims, however, were widely believed to have been exaggerated, and the offensive has largely failed to materialize.

Afghans reacted cautiously to the news about Dadullah, and there were no public celebrations. Several people said they were happy Dadullah was gone but skeptical his death would make much of a positive difference. Some said they feared the violence would intensify.

"Dadullah killed a lot of people," said Raza Nedizad, 24, a shopkeeper in Kabul, the Afghan capital. "But now I worry the suicide bombings will increase because the Taliban are angry and they want to take revenge."