Taliban commander suspected to be mastermind of attack killed, say Afghani intelligence

A Taliban commander, believed to be the mastermind of a deadly attack on a military base in Afghanistan that killed and injured a large number of troops earlier this week, has been brought down by security forces in an airstrike, the country's intelligence agency said on Wednesday. The retaliatory strike by security forces followed the Monday attack by the Taliban on the military base in Maidan Shahr, about 44 km southwest of Kabul, that reportedly killed nearly 100 Afghan troops.

But the country's intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), played down the toll as 36 killed and 58 wounded. The base was a training center for the NDS. The attack took place just hours before a new round of peace talks between the Taliban and the US in Qatar.

The intelligence agency said in a statement that Taliban commander Numan was killed along with seven terrorists following the airstrike in Maidan Shar district at 11.12 p.m. on Tuesday, Efe news reported. "Commander Numan, who was the mastermind of the deadly bombing against the agency's base in Maidan-Wardak was identified, located and was killed along with seven other terrorists," it said.

The Taliban, however, denied that Afghan forces had killed their commander. The NDS said that it will continue to comb the area for more militants, who might have been involved in the attack. A suicide bomber had rammed a captured military Humvee truck, laden with explosives, into the NDS center and detonated it before three heavily armed men tried to storm the facility. Officials, however, blamed the massive Humvee bombing for causing most the casualties because Afghan forces swiftly engaged and shot dead other assailants, reports say.