Pakistani police arrested five suspected Afghan militants in a raid in the southwestern city of Quetta, as a Pakistani newspaper said yesterday. The five suspected militants were among 32 Afghans rounded up in Quetta, where Pakistani security officials said senior Taliban leader Mullah Obaidullah Akhund was arrested last Monday. The police did not say if the five were members of the Taliban but said they were seized with compromising Islamist documents.

The Afghan government and foreign officials in Kabul have long said the Taliban were organizing their insurgency against the Afghan government from Quetta, capital of Baluchistan province, which borders Afghanistan.

The insurgents have threatened to unleash a spring offensive in Afghanistan in coming weeks after the bloodiest year since their ouster in 2001. Pakistan has been coming under mounting pressure from the United States and other Western governments with troops in Afghanistan to take action against Taliban operating from sanctuaries on the Pakistani side of the border.

Pakistan has been in the grip of a security scare as militant groups sympathetic to al Qaeda and the Taliban have carried out a series of suicide and bomb attacks in various cities.

Separately, Pakistani security forces arrested five foreign militants on Saturday in the southwestern city of Tuftan near the Iranian border, a security official said. The five, from Russia, Turkey and Kyrgyzstan, were arrested after crossing in from Iran, the border security official said.

Gul YOUSAFZAI