A look at Mullah Dadullah's life

A look at the Taliban's most prominent military commander, Mullah Dadullah:

_ 1980s: Fights against the Soviet occupation of his native country, Afghanistan. Loses a leg during fighting.

_ 1990s: Emerges as commander of Taliban forces while fighting against the Northern Alliance in northern Afghanistan. Helps the Taliban capture the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

_ 1999: Leads a massacre of ethnic Hazaras in Bamiyan province, where the Taliban in 2000 destroyed two large, ancient Buddha statues carved into a hillside cliff.

Dadullah came from the southern province of Uruzgan and was an ethnic Pashtun, the group that makes up the core of the Taliban.

A top lieutenant of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, Dadullah was responsible for the militia's operations in Afghanistan's eastern and southeastern regions. After the Taliban's ouster in late 2001, he became the group's most prominent and feared commander.

Rahimullah Yusufzai, an editor for the Pakistani newspaper The News and an expert on the Taliban, said many Taliban fighters had been unhappy with Dadullah because of his beheadings, kidnappings and boastful videos.