Key al-Qaeda leader 'killed' in Konduz
BY AFP IN TASHKENT
Juma "Jumaboy" Namangani, an Uzbek pro-Taleban guerrilla chief, has been killed in Konduz, according to General Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Northern Alliance commander.
Mr Dostum told the BBC's Uzbek service: "According to our information, Namangani and 24 of his followers were killed in the province of Konduz, where fierce fighting is taking place now." Mr Dostam is an ethnic Uzbek. Other Afghan sources were not able to confirm the death of Namangani, who, according to Northern Alliance officials recently became a right-hand man of Osama bin Laden.
An estimated 20,000 and 30,000 troops, including many foreign fighters linked to Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network, are besieged in Konduz, the Taleban’s final refuge along with pockets of southern Afghanistan that include the city of Kandahar.
When former Soviet Uzbekistan gained independence in 1991, Namangani, 37, was one of the leading Wahhabite Muslim fundamentalists. Driven into hiding, he fled in May 1992 to neighbouring Tajikistan and fought in the ranks of the Islamic opposition seeking to overthrow the post-Communist regime in Dushanbe.
In September 1992, as Tajik government troops gained the upper hand, he went into exile in Afghanistan. In summer 1999, fighters from his Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) kidnapped four Japanese geologists and launched an incursion into Kyrgyzstan, aiming to pass into Uzbekistan to declare an Islamic state there.
When they were defeated, Namangani’s men retreated into a remote region in eastern
Tajikistan. Last year, under pressure from the Uzbek authorities, the Namangani fled again to Afghanistan to the northern province of Konduz. Around 700 rebels and their families followed him.
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