Top Taliban Commander Killed in Afghanistan

May 13, 2007 — -- The Taliban's top military commander, Mullah Dadullah Lang, was killed in an attack by American forces in southern Helmand province, U.S. and Afghani officials said today.

"The Taliban commander, and brutal person, the famous killer of al-Qaeda, Dadullah, was killed in the joint operation," Kandahar Gov. Asadullah Khalid told reporters.

Years of intelligence-gathering led up to the American strike in southern Afghanistan at about 3 a.m. Saturday, U.S. and NATO defense officials said.

The details remain murky, but the attack that left Mullah Dadullah Lang's body with a bullet wound in the head and two in the stomach was likely carried out by a special operations hunter-killer team.

"It's a big blow to the insurgency that he is gone," U.S. Air Force Maj. John Thomas, spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force in Kabul, told ABC News. "From sanctuaries across the border, he has led the insurgency for years. And he has been associated with some of the most brutal acts of the Taliban extremists in Afghanistan."

In recent months, Dadullah had boasted that the Taliban would launch a major spring offensive. U.S. and NATO officials said that it failed to materialize largely because their winter campaign weakened the Taliban.

After recent losses, military strategists say the one-legged commander directed a shift in Taliban's tactics that brought the widespread use of Iraq-style car bombs, improvised explosives and gruesome assassinations to Afghanistan — including a recent videotaped beheading, carried out by a 12-year-old boy across the border in Pakistan.

"He's viewed as truly a cruel figure, and a ruthless individual," said Marvin Weinbaum, an analyst at the Middle East Institute. "He had a plan. He could see things beyond ... simple guerilla operations. And I think that that's mostly what the Taliban is going to be missing now."