US-led and Afghan soldiers arrested two senior Taleban commanders and six militants during an operation in south-central Afghanistan, officials said on Sunday. The men were seized late Saturday during a joint Afghan-US operation in Charchino, a troubled district in Uruzgan province, US military spokesman Major Mark McCann said. "We believe that one of them is the brother of Taleban's former governor of (southern) Kandahar province," he told AFP.
McCann was unable to provide any further details about the operation but an Afghan defence ministry official said the raid targeted senior Taleban commanders in the province.
Among those arrested was another Taleban leader, the official said on condition of anonymity.
"Beside the brother of the former Kandahar governor there was another big Taleban commander," he said.
The arrests took place on the same day as the US-led military announced the launch of a major operation dubbed "Lightning Freedom" to hunt down Taleban-linked militants in their winter strongholds.
McCann did not say if the weekend hunt was part of the newly-launched offensive.
Elsewhere, in north-eastern Kunar province, suspected militants detonated an improvised bomb which injured up to six Afghan civilians, defence ministry spokesman, General Abdul Zahir Azimi told reporters earlier in the day.
"Two of the wounded men were evacuated to (the US) coalition's base at Bagram for treatment," the spokesman said.
Expressing concerns about a rise in the number of home-made bomb attacks in recent months, Azimi blamed the attacks on Taleban and al Qaeda fighters who oppose the US-backed government of president Hamid Karzai.
Separately on Saturday in eastern Kunar Afghan security forces arrested a driver who was carrying explosives and "bomb-making materials" in his vehicle which was apparently heading to neighbouring Nangarhar province and onto the capital Kabul.
Azimi said his ministry along with other security agencies were working on a security plan for the war-weary country's parliamentary elections which are scheduled next year.