Taliban commander, 140 Afghans held in Pak

Mullah Hamdullah, the ex-Taliban member, was arrested during a raid on a house in the provincial capital Quetta.

Pakistani police arrested a former Taliban commander and 140 other illegal Afghan immigrants from the restive southwestern province of Balochistan, officials said on Tuesday.

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Mullah Hamdullah, the ex-Taliban member, was arrested during a raid on a house in the provincial capital Quetta late on Monday, Balochistan police chief Chaudhry Mohammed Yaqub told the agency.

"We are questioning Hamdullah about the activities he had been carrying out in Pakistan and his linkages with other terrorist groups," Yaqub said.

Some 140 illegal Afghan immigrants were also arrested during the last 48 hours and they will be sent back to Afghanistan after investigations, he said.

"We will arrest Afghans entering illegally into Pakistan and the Afghan refugees would be confined to their camps, as investigators have found involvement of Afghans in three bomb blasts in the city," he said.

He did not say whether the detained Afghans were directly suspected of militant activity.

Many fugitives from Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime sneaked into Balochistan in late 2001 after the hardliners were ousted for sheltering Osama bin Laden following the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Balochistan has also been racked by clashes between security forces and tribal rebels demanding a bigger share of the huge but sparsely populated province's natural resources.

The British government said yesterday it intends to ban one of the tribal militant groups, the Balochistan Liberation Army, under existing anti-terror laws.