Meet Taliban's most vicious leader

Mullah Dadullah Akhund commands the Taliban in southern Afghanistan and he is now trying to outdo slain al-Qaeda leader Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi in viciousness and cruelty, a media report has said.

In one video, Dadullah is seen blasting away at an unseen target with heavy machine guns and another shows him blessing young men before being apparently sent to carry out suicide bombings in Afghan cities and military bases, Newsweek magazine said.

But the most chilling video is the footage of his men slitting the throats of six Afghans, one by one, on the suspicion that they were spying for the Americans.

The report said that this year's armed push by the Taliban has been the biggest and bloodiest since they lost Kabul in 2001, and Dadullah is believed to be spearheading it.

The surge in suicide bombings, school burnings and guerrilla ambushes has killed more than 100 Afghan civilians and at least 40 coalition soldiers, including 24 US troops.

For the first time in memory, Taliban guerrillas under Dadullah have succeeded in capturing government installations in the remote south, if only for brief periods, the report said.

Newsweek says some of those raids are documented in the new recruitment videos it obtained from an Afghan involved in making copies for distribution.

Villagers told the magazine that an ever-increasing numbers of Taliban fighters are roaming the countryside, entering villages at night -- sometimes even in daylight -- and warning inhabitants not to cooperate with the Americans or their allies, on pain of death.

Dadullah's own men don't want to risk his anger.

Mullah Ghul Agha, who identifies himself as Dadullah's third in command, told Newsweek that his boss' disposition swings abruptly from cheerfulness to rage.

'For two hours he can be in a good humour, then suddenly he changes into a dark mood that can last for hours,' Agha said.

'He would kill anyone for not obeying orders,' he said.

'I certainly would not want to face Dadullah on the battlefield.'

Dadullah built a reputation for cruelty as a Taliban field commander in the 1990s. He lost his leg in a landmine blast in 1995, the year before the Taliban took Kabul, but he returned from the hospital in Karachi with a prosthetic limb and meaner than ever, fighting his way to become one of the Taliban's three deputy defence ministers.

His name became identified with atrocities that Taliban Radio would report he was engaged in battles even when he was not, as a ploy to unnerve opposing forces, the report said.

Dadullah specialised in brutal assignments. One, in 1998, was to pacify the ethnic minority Hazaras, a Shiite group in Bamian province. Dadullah's tactics were so ruthless -- he massacred hundreds of Hazara civilians -- that Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar relieved him of his command, the report said.

Even so, a year later Dadullah was back in the field, leading a major drive against the US-backed Northern Alliance in the far north Kunduz province and reportedly slaughtering Tajik and Uzbek non-combatants by the hundreds, the report said.