Mullah accused of attempted genocide of Shia 'is arrested'

A Taliban commander accused of leading an attempted genocide of Shia Muslims in Afghanistan in 2001 has reportedly been arrested in Kandahar province, an Afghan general said yesterday.

Mullah Dadullah, the one-legged Taliban leader known as Dadullah the Lame, was believed to have been captured in a joint US-Afghan operation on Wednesday, said General Rehmatullah Raufi, the head of the Afghan military's southern region.

Neither the Afghan government nor the US military was able to confirm the arrest. Dadullah, who lost a leg fighting for the Taliban during its rise to power in the mid-1990s, is one of the hardline militia's senior commanders, responsible for operations in the east and south-east.

He has also been blamed for much of the recent violence in the southern province of Helmand, where thousands of British troops are being deployed.

Before the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Dadullah was known to have led several massacres of the local ethnic Hazara population of Shia Muslims.