Bin Laden's Associate Juma Namangani Killed, Assert Taleban

The Frontier Post newspaper has cited Taliban representatives as saying that Juma Namangani, a close associate of Osama bin Laden's, was killed during an air raid of Kabul several days ago and secretly buried in the Logar province. On his part, the Northern Alliance field commander Abdul Rashid Dostum reported on Monday that Namangani had been killed outside Kunduz. The Taleban, however, insist that the leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan met his death outside Kabul. Moreover, they assert that it happened last week. During the past few months, Namangani headed fundamentalist armed forces in northern parts of Afghanistan, reads a decree issued by mullah Omar, the spiritual leader of the Taleban. Namangani's detachments numbered a total of 10,000-15,000 soldiers, many of them ethnic Uzbeks, Pakistanis, Arabs, Chechens, Bangladesh, Uighurs, etc.