Enraged Malaysian wife bites off husband’s finger

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 17: A Malaysian businessman lost part of his right index finger when his enraged wife, who suspected him of having an affair, bit it off during a scuffle this week, a local newspaper reported today.

The 50-year-old man, who was not identified, drove himself to a local hospital in Sandakan on the eastern state of Sabah on Borneo, but doctors were unable to reattach the severed digit, the star newspaper said.

Sandakan District Deputy Police Chief Mashud Awang Hamid told the paper the woman suspected her husband was being unfaithful because he had been coming home late for the past few months.

On Wednesday night, the 40-year-old wife trailed and then confronted her husband. But the businessman slapped the woman twice and a scuffle broke out during which she bit off about 1.5 centimetres of her husband’s finger.

Awang Hamid said police would question the woman. (REUTERS)

Anti-Taliban groups oppose power transfer to Mulla Omar’s aides

QUETTA, PAKISTAN, Nov 17: A former Governor of the southern Afghan province Kandahar, Gul Agha, today opposed the reported decision of Taliban’s supreme leader Mulla Mohammed Omar to hand over the city to Mulla Naqeebulla and Haji Bashar.

"This decision is unacceptable because it does not mean any real change of guard. These people (Naqeebulla and Bashar) have been close aides of the Taliban," Yousaf Pashtoon, a close associate of Gul Agha, quoted him as saying.

Mulla Omar late yesterday agreed to pull out of Kandahar, where he had established his power base, and asked Mulla Naqeebulla and Haji Bashar to take care of the city.

"These were the people who supported the movement and strengthened the Al-Qaeda network in Afghanistan," Pashtoon told DPA, and claimed that about 1,000 soldiers have been moved to Arghastan, south of Kandahar city, to resist Mulla Omar’s decision.

Other reports from Kandahar said Mulla Omar’s aides were still negotiating the transfer of power with local commanders including Mulla Naqeebulla.

"Taliban are still very much there, patrolling the city streets," an official told DPA by satellite phone, requesting not to be named.

The official said people in Kandahar were very concerned about the fast changing situation, and hoped that local commanders and tribesmen could reach a peaceful agreement on the new administration.

"They hope that if the power transfer came about peacefully, that could also perhaps bring an end to the US bombings," the official maintained while saying that despite tensions Kandaharis were going about their daily business as usual.

The official also confirmed that two days of aerial strikes, which on Thursday destroyed the main compound of the UN Demining Agency for Afghanistan (DAFA), had also destroyed a warehouse of the Pakistan-based Al-Rasheed Trust, a charity who has been put on a list of organisations with links to terrorist organisations.

Al-Rasheed Trust had been running computer training and medical centres besides more than 150 bakeries in Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif and Kandahar which provided subsidised bread to the needy.

Mulla Naqeebulla served as the Corps Commander of the southern region in his capacity as representative of the Jamiat-e-Islami of Burhanuddin Rabbani until the summer of 1994 when the Taliban movement emerged and Naqeebulla ceded power to Mulla Omar.

Haji Bashar, according to Pakistani and American intelligence officials, has been the kingpin of drug traffickers in southern Afghanistan and a trusted aide of Mulla Omar. He was also reported to have financed the Taliban military operations after their emergence on the Afghan scenario in 1994. (DPA)

No asylum for Mulla Omar or Osama bin Laden: Pak

ISLAMABAD, Nov 17: Pakistan today denied reports that Taliban chief Mulla Omar or Osama bin Laden may have entered the country.

The sudden collapse of the Taliban even in southern Afghanistan beginning Friday shocked many Pakistani observers and triggered fears that fleeing militia fighters might now head toward Pakistan for sanctuary in border areas.

The dramatic Taliban reversals prompted an urgent meeting Friday headed by Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf, who decided to plug all possible entry points with an additional 3,000 forces in the southwestern region.

A foreign office spokesman denied reports that Taliban chief Mulla Omar or Osama bin Laden entered into Pakistan and also ruled out asylum for them.

"They are not here nor will they be given asylum if they asked for it," Aziz Khan, the foreign office spokesman, told reporters. "That is why we joined the western coalition against terrorism," Khan added.

"Border security has been tightened to block entry of armed Taliban fighters who have been fleeing after withdrawing from many Afghan provinces," an official said after the meeting.

An official of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Yousuf Hassan, also expressed fears that fleeing Taliban militiamen might try to take shelter in refugee camps.

"The Government of the states hosting refugees have the responsibility to ensure the separation of any possible combatants from refugee populations and guarantee the non-military nature of the camps," Hassan said at a press briefing in Islamabad.

Washington, apprehensive of a spillover of Taliban and Bin Laden followers into the Pakistani border areas, has extended an additional 73 million dollars to Pakistan to help it strengthen border surveillance.

The US has already announced a special 600-million-dollar aid package as an acknowledgement of Pakistan’s support to the US-led military campaign.

Reports from the more than 2,000-kilometre border that Pakistan shares with Afghanistan said that thousands of armed Pakistani tribals, who had earlier this month moved into the embattled country to beef up Taliban defences, were also returning home.

But their leader, Mulla Soofi Mohammad, was Friday denied entry to Bajaur because he refused to surrender arms, sources in the border town told Deutsche Presse Agentur DPA Saturday. Mohammad heads a militant Pakistani version of the Taliban - Tehrike Nifaze Shariate Mohammadi (TNSM).

Bajaur is one of the seven tribal administrative zones or political agencies that the British colonial rulers created after years of combat more than a century ago with the fiercely independent Pashtoon tribes inhabiting the region.

The seven agencies are administered through a special set of laws that allow possession of weapons and they are quiet on small-scale drug trafficking.

Foreigners - tourists as well as journalists - require a special permit as well as armed escorts to visit or transit through these areas if enroute to Afghanistan.

Soon after the US bombing campaign against alleged terrorist targets in Afghanistan began, Islamabad also banned foreign media from entering the tribal zone.

These areas had served as the launching pads and breeding grounds not only for the anti-Soviet moslem resistance fighters in the 1980s but also as nurseries and recruitment centres for the Taliban.

"We have taken steps to make sure that the border is sealed and nobody can cross over into Pakistan," chief presidential spokesman Major General Rashid Qureshi said in Islamabad.

Qureshi also reiterated an official warning: Those violating Government policy - regardless whether Pakistani tribals or Afghan Taliban - would be dealt with firmly, he said. (DPA)

US hunts Bin Laden, strafe hills around remaining Taliban bastions

WASHINGTON, Nov 17: US forces today continued to hunt for suspected terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden, as fighters from the hardline Taliban regime fled their last major stronghold in Afghanistan and the nation’s elderly former king planned his return.

True to its vow that there would be no pause in bombing for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Washington strafed Taliban positions on the hills around the town of Khanabad early in the day, hoping to dislodge the embattled militia from one of its last remaining redoubt.

A US B-52 bomber dropped several bombs around 9:00 a.m. On the hills around Khanabad, located some 20 km east of Kunduz, an AFP reporter said.

US warplanes have attacked the home of a key Taliban commander in Afghanistan, the Afghan Islamic Press reported today, amid intensified US strikes against the Islamic militia’s leadership.

By early in the day, Taliban control of Northern Afghanistan had been whittled away to a swatch of land with a radius of a mere 20 km around Kunduz. Taliban forces were reportedly preparing to abandon their stronghold of Kandahar and head for the mountains to wage a guerrilla war. Kandahar was hit yesterday by fierce US airstrikes.

The Taliban today denied that the militia’s leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, had surrendered control of the southern city of Kandahar, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

The Taliban’s retreat would signify a major success for the six-week old US-led military offensive unleashed to punish them for harbouring suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden.

Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar ordered the pullout to avoid further civilian casualties from US air strikes against the city, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press said.

The withdrawal, if confirmed, would mark the final collapse of the Taliban’s hardline Islamic rule in Afghanistan. Except for a besieged pocket of land in the far north, the regime — which held 90 per cent of the country a week ago — the Taliban would control no major cities and only a few provinces in the dust bowl south of the country.

Northern Alliance officials said the endgame now was underway in Kunduz as well.

"At the end of two days, we will attack. We want to enter Kunduz before winter," said General Mohammad Daud, Commander of Northern Alliance forces attacking the city.

Anti-Taliban leader Hamid Karzai said a delegation from the alliance and former King Mohammed Zahir Shah had left the Pakistani city of Quetta to meet Taliban officials in Kandahar and urge them to lay down their arms.

"I am very, very hopeful that finally my mission will be successful," he said. (AFP)

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