World Scene

AFGHANISTAN

Taliban leader killed, 22 fighters nabbed

KABUL — U.S. and Afghan troops killed a Taliban commander and detained 22 suspected Taliban fighters during a major search operation after a gunbattle in a southern Afghanistan mountain range, officials said yesterday.

A renegade warlord also was taken into custody weeks after a clash with a powerful rival in the west of the country, as authorities struggle to improve security for October elections.

Mullah Rozi Khan, a Taliban commander in Zabul province, was killed after troops surrounded a group of rebels in Ghazoi village Friday evening, said Asadullah Khan, governor of neighboring Ghazni province.

SUDAN

Arabs continue attacking Africans

AL-FASHER — Security has improved in camps in Sudan’s violence-torn Darfur region, but displaced villagers still face attacks and abuse when they leave their camps, a U.N. team said yesterday as it completed a mission that could determine whether Sudan deserves international sanctions.

Darfur rebels, meanwhile, said government forces and Arab militiamen continue to bomb and torch villages and kill civilians — with attacks on six villages in the past three days, including one that killed 64 persons. The rebels said they would hold a 24-hour boycott of peace talks with the Sudanese government to protest.

More than 1 million black African villagers have been driven from their homes by the Arab militiamen known as the Janjaweed, said to have support from the government, and many of the villagers are in 147 camps scattered across Darfur, a region the size of France.

IRAN

Nuclear program to continue

TEHRAN — Iran said yesterday it would continue its nuclear program but provide “guarantees” not to build atomic weapons, and it warned the U.S. government that it cannot stabilize neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan without Tehran’s help.

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