Islamic Taliban commanders secretly met elusive leader Mullah Mohammad Omar last week and vowed to step up attacks on Afghan government and U.S.-led allied troops, a commander said on Wednesday.

An Afghan soldier sits on a rocket launcher placed at a check point on a road. Dozens of suspected Taliban were beseiged in a religious school by Afghan troops in an eastern border region at the center of an apparent resurgence by the militia. [AFP]

Taliban guerrilla commander Mullah Sabir, alias Mullah Momin, told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location that Omar appeared "delighted" by a recent spate of Taliban attacks.

At the meeting on September 17, held somewhere in southern Afghanistan, Omar urged around 50 top military commanders and former governors not to slow their activities, Mullah Momin said.

"I salute my Taliban mujahideen (holy warrior) brothers and the Afghan people. They have courageously carried out their jihadi (holy war) responsibilities for the last two years to defend Islam," Omar was quoted as saying.

"All the Taliban commanders should carry out the duties entrusted to them as a personal responsibility," he added.

Mullah Momin said he had started spreading Omar's message to other Taliban commanders who were not present at the meeting, adding that the leaders had agreed to "accelerate" attacks.

On Wednesday, the U.S.-led military force in Afghanistan said 10 rockets had landed near two of its bases in the southeast of the country the previous night, but caused no casualties.

Two of the rockets landed near a base at Asadabad and eight others near a base at Shkin, military spokesman Major Richard Sater told a news briefing.

He said U.S.-led forces fired mortars at the suspected launch site in Asadabad last night, but gave no other details.

Such attacks, which have been an almost daily occurrence in Afghanistan in the past year but generally ineffective, have been blamed in past on Taliban guerrillas.

TALIBAN CAPTURED

In another incident on Tuesday, Afghan forces captured four Taliban guerrillas in the Suri area of Zabul province, Commander Haji Mohammad told Reuters, adding that a cache of arms had been found during the raid.

The United States toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan for providing a safe haven to Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

But in the last few months the Taliban has carried out a spate of attacks and Afghan government officials blame their resurgence on support from neighboring Pakistan.

Since the start of August, more than 280 people have been killed and scores wounded across Afghanistan, among them civilians, Afghan aid workers, police and militiamen, three U.S. soldiers and many Taliban guerrillas.

The 12,500-strong U.S.-led force launched Operation Mountain Viper last month in response to the presence of hundreds of guerrillas and their allies in Uruzgan and Zabul provinces.

President Hamid Karzai told President Bush on Tuesday he was concerned that some people in the border regions of neighboring Pakistan were preaching support for the Taliban.

During the 45-minute meeting, Bush promised to raise the issue with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on Wednesday.

Pakistan strongly supported Mullah Omar's Taliban regime but abandoned him after the September 11 attacks, and is now a key ally in the U.S.-led "war on terror."

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