A senior commander from Afghanistan's Taleban militia previously held at a US base in Guantanamo Bay was killed by Afghan forces in the central province of Uruzgan, a senior official said on Sunday.
Mawlavi Ghafar was killed along with two followers in an ambush in the Char Cheno district of Uruzgan late on Saturday while walking to a district village, said provincial governor Jan Mohammad Khan.
Taleban officials admitted two Taleban fighters' deaths in the incident, but said Ghafar was unhurt and that four Afghan National Army soldiers were killed.
Khan also said that Char Cheno district chief, Malem Wali Jan, was killed during an overnight Taleban attack on a joint US and Afghan forces convoy.
He said two of Jan's bodyguards were hurt and that US soldiers suffered no casualties in the attack, which happened in the same district where Ghafar was killed.
Officials said Ghafar became the Taleban's senior commander for Uruzgan and neighbouring Helmand provinces after he was released from the US military prison in Cuba.
The hard-line Islamic government was toppled by US-led forces after it failed to hand over Osama bin Laden, leader of the al Qaeda network that masterminded the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
Hundreds of Taleban and al Qaeda suspects were taken to Guantanamo Bay by US forces after the Afghan war in late 2001.
Remnants of the Taleban, opposed to the US-backed government in Kabul and the presence of foreign forces in Afghanistan, have waged a campaign of violence which they hope will disrupt a presidential election on October 9.
More than 1,000 people have been killed, most in attacks linked to the Taleban or their militant allies, since August last year.
In a separate incident, the Afghan security co-ordinator for Kunar province said two herd boys aged 14 and 10 were killed by accidental coalition fire on Saturday.
There were no further details and a spokesman for coalition forces was not immediately available.
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