After months of Taliban infighting that has left hundreds dead, the prominent head of a splinter faction allied with the Islamic State has been killed, government officials and Taliban commanders said on Tuesday.
The splinter commander, Mullah Mansour Dadullah, died last month in a gunfight after being caught by core Taliban fighters in the Khak-e-Afghan district of Zabul, a southeastern province that borders Pakistan, according to Ghulam JilaniFarahi, the provincial security chief.
Taliban commanders in Helmand and Uruzgan Provinces confirmed Mullah Dadullah's death, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid retribution, according to The New York Times.
His killing would remove a major rival to the Taliban's new leader, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, who has presided over major insurgent offensives this year even while fighting to consolidate his power and address a new threat by fighters who have declared loyalty to the Islamic State.
Mullah Dadullah was a respected senior Taliban commander when he split from Mullah Mansour over the revelation this summer that the group's supreme leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, had been dead for at least two years.
The announcement set off a power struggle, with Mullah Dadullah among the most prominent of those who broke away and accused Mullah Mansour of conspiring with Pakistani intelligence to hide their leader's death and claim power over the insurgency.
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Mullah Mansour responded by sending hundreds of Taliban to battle Mullah Dadullah's forces in Zabul Province, and there has been heavy fighting there. Elders in the Khak-e-Afghan district said that Mullah Dadullah had hidden out there after Taliban forces drove his men into the neighboring district of Arghandab. They said that Taliban fighters discovered him in November after detaining one of his men, who revealed that Mullah Dadullah had been hiding in the home of one of his local commanders, Mullah Abdullah Haqmal.
The Taliban surrounded the house near midnight and demanded that Mullah Dadullah surrender. Instead, he and his men opened fire with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns, and the battle continued for hours. Finally, the Taliban set off a large bomb, killing everyone inside the house, including Mullah Haqmal and several Uzbek fighters loyal to the Islamic State, the local elders said.
The elders said they were not allowed by the Taliban to dig out the bodies for several days, but were eventually able to bury him in the village of Kala-e-Atish. The Taliban had killed many Uzbek and Islamic State fighters, they said.
Although the elders, government officials and Taliban commanders all agreed that Mullah Dadullah had been killed, and rumors of his death had been circulating for weeks, his spokesman still insists that he is alive, though wounded.
The spokesman, Mullah NaimNiazi, said that Dadullah had only been wounded in the leg and was now recovering, and that his men continued fighting in the Daichopan district of Zabul Province. But he also said Mullah Mansour's fighters had kept Dadullah's men from carrying him away.
In a November 25 statement, the Taliban noted that Mullah Dadullah had combined his forces in Zabul with local Uzbek fighters for the Islamic State, which has grown in influence in eastern Afghanistan in recent months.
While that Taliban statement did not acknowledge Dadullah's death, it can be read as a justification for his killing. It said that several delegations of influential elders and commanders had gone
to meet him to resolve the conflict but that all negotiations failed.
Dadullah reportedly refused the Taliban's demands to abandon the Islamic State-allied fighters and publicly accept the authority of Mansour.