By Maaz Khan, AFP
Pakistani forces captured and wounded a top Taliban commander Monday, while Islamabad's ambassador to Afghanistan was feared abducted in a troubled tribal border region, officials said.

The incidents highlighted the continuing instability in nuclear-armed Pakistan -- a key ally in the US-led "war on terror" -- with crucial parliamentary elections just one week away.

The senior Taliban commander, Mullah Mansoor Dadullah, and at least five other rebels were seized in Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province, bordering Afghanistan, officials said.

Dadullah, the brother of the Islamist militia's slain military chief in Afghanistan, had been in charge of operations against NATO and US-led troops in the southern Afghan province of Helmand.

"He is in the custody of the security agencies along with five accomplices. They are all injured," chief Pakistani military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas told AFP.

"They were intercepted and chased by security forces at a Frontier Constabulary post near the Afghan border."

A military statement said Dadullah and his men were "trying to enter Pakistan" across the border.

Baluchistan police chief Saud Gohar said Dadullah was hiding in a house in the village of Gowal Ismail Zai and wounded after he "resisted when our men launched an operation" early on Monday morning.

One of the Taliban commander's guards was killed, he said.

In Kabul, Afghan defence ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi welcomed the news of Dadullah's capture but would not comment further.

A senior Afghan official suggested the capture was linked to a dispute between Dadullah and the Taliban's central command.

Dadullah had succeeded his elder brother -- the Taliban's overall military commander Mullah Dadullah -- who was killed in a joint Afghan-NATO operation in southern Afghanistan in May 2007.

The Taliban said in late December that they had sacked Mansoor Dadullah because he disobeyed orders. But a spokesman for the commander denied that he was fired, leading to speculation about infighting among the rebels.

The alleged sacking came as media reports emerged that British intelligence agents were involved in talks with senior Taliban in Helmand, although it was never clear who they might have been.

There was no immediate confirmation of the arrest from the Taliban.

Zabihullah Mujahed, a Taliban spokesman, said Mansoor Dadullah was one of five Taliban who were freed in May last year in exchange for a kidnapped Italian journalist, Daniele Mastrogiacomo.

News of Dadullah's capture comes a day after US Defence Secretary Robert Gates warned that Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants in the country's border regions posed a direct threat to the Islamabad government.

Pakistan on Saturday dismissed an unnamed senior US official's assertion that Taliban leader Mullah Omar and Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden were operating from regions along the Afghan border.

In the latest incident to rock the border region, the Pakistani envoy to Kabul, Tariq Azizuddin, went missing with his driver in the tribal district of Khyber on Monday, officials said.

The Pakistani embassy in Kabul said it last had contact with the ambassador at around 11:30 am (0630 GMT) and was trying to find out what had happened.

"We know that he was coming from (the northwestern Pakistani city of) Peshawar to Kabul and we lost contact with him. We are trying our best to find out what happened," spokesman Naheem Khan told AFP.

State television, quoting the foreign office, said he was feared abducted.

The chief administrative official in Khyber, Rasool Khan Wazir, said security forces had seen the envoy's car driven at speed through a checkpost with "local people sitting in the front seat".

The main road between Pakistan and Afghanistan was closed for search operations, television channels said.

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