Taleban leader warns of fierce fighting

KABUL - Fugitive Taleban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar has used the holiest Muslim holiday of the year to warn that his men will intensify their fighting in Afghanistan to "surprising" levels to drive out foreign infidels.

In a lengthy message to Afghans for Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, Omar urged NATO to withdraw its almost 20,000 troops and said the nation still stood with him.

"With the grace of Allah, the fighting will be increased ... and it will be organised in the next few months," he said in a Pashto language message to media also posted on the internet and signed "Leader of the Faithful in the Afghan Resistance".

"I am confident the fighting will be a surprise for many," said the one-eyed leader, with a US$10 million ($15 million) bounty on his head.

This has been the bloodiest year in Afghanistan since Omar's Islamist government was ousted by a US-led invasion in 2001.

NATO, which took over national command of the war against the Taleban from US forces this month, says attacks in the south have fallen since it killed hundreds of insurgents in a two-week offensive last month named Operation Medusa.

But fighting and bombings are virtually daily events and the government has warned of a rise in suicide raids ahead of the traditional winter lull in combat.

One police officer in Kabul said 15 men had been caught trying to enter the city with explosives ahead of Eid.

Taleban video obtained by Reuters this month shows fighters well-armed and equipped in the mountains of Uruzgan in the south. They are seen fighting, looting a police post and beheading men identified as spies. Several suicide bombers pledge to die to drive the "infidels" from their country.

"They (the Taleban) have switched to what we call asymmetrical warfare... I expect that they will carry out more suicide attacks in Uruzgan," Peter Spijk, general of Dutch forces in Afghanistan, told the NRC Handelsblad newspaper.

"It is a worrying development. Suicide attacks are even carried out in Kabul nowadays. We must watch out for Iraqi conditions in Afghanistan," he said.

NATO said it killed five rebels in an air strike in Paktika province, bordering Pakistan, on Sunday.

Omar said President Hamid Karzai would face Islamic justice for cooperating with Washington.

"The Kabul puppet regime has failed to establish peace and stability as well as to control narcotics," he said, adding members of the government were involved in the opium trade.

Officials and analysts say the Taleban is partly funded by drug lords. Afghanistan supplies about 90 per cent of the world's opium, the raw material for heroin, and its crop is expected to jump about 60 per cent this year.

Talking to reporters after Eid prayers at the presidential palace, Karzai did not comment on Omar's message, but called on Afghans not to be swayed by the Taleban.

"My message to those who are being used by strangers and killing their people and their children, destroying their homes, my message is to free themselves from the grip of menace," he said. "That menace has been destroying Afghanistan for years.

A weekend deadline by kidnappers of an Italian photojournalist in the south for the handover by Italy of an Afghan convert to Christianity from Islam passed with no word from the abductors.

- REUTERS