ISLAMABAD: One of the highest ranking Taliban officials in Pakistan has been arrested with four other militants in the country’s north-west, officials say. Muslim Khan was a key spokesman for the Taliban in the Swat valley as well as one of the most senior militant commanders in the region.

The army recently staged

an offensive in Swat, which it

declared a success.

One of the chief criticisms of the operation had been that it had failed to net the top Taliban leadership. These are the first significant arrests.

The whereabouts and fate of the Taliban leader in Swat, Maulana Fazlullah, are unknown.

After reports that Maulana Fazlullah was close to death earlier

this year having being seriously wounded, it was Muslim Khan,

who said that Taliban chief

was “alive and healthy”. Muslim Khan is one of the most

recognised faces of the Taliban in the Swat valley. He frequently spoke to journalists on behalf of Maulana Fazlullah. He was articulate and skilled in handling the media.

The widely travelled Muslim Khan speaks English fairly well and also gave interviews in Arabic.

He spent two years as a seaman with a British shipping company in the 1970s and lived in the US in the late 1990s, where he worked as a house painter.

The military said Khan was apprehended after a “successful

operation”.