ISLAMABAD, June 24 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - The leader of the ousted Taliban regime, Mullah Mohammad Omar, has urged his followers to step up “jihad” against the U.S. and other foreign occupation forces in Afghanistan, a Pakistani daily reported Tuesday, June 24.

He issued the call in an audio tape sent from his hiding place in Afghanistan, the daily The News said, quoting Taliban spokesman Mohammad Mukhtar Mujahid.

Omar has named a 10-member leadership council to organize the resistance against the U.S.-led foreign troops, the spokesman told the widely-read English language newspaper.

"Mullah Omar called upon Taliban to offer sacrifices for evicting the American and allied soldiers from Afghanistan and fighting the puppet regime of (president) Hamid Karzai," Mujahid said.

The 10 men identified by Omar as members of the Rahbari Shura, or leadership council, included former Taliban military commanders, most veterans of the Afghan struggle against Soviet occupation troops between 1979-89, the paper said.

Taliban military commander Jalaluddin Haqqani is on the council which is made up of commanders hailing from Kandahar, Helmand and other southwestern provinces where the Taliban had originally emerged in 1994, it added.

Two of the council members, Akhtar Mohammad Usmani, a confidante of Mullah Omar and former intelligence chief Mullah Dadullah, were on the Afghan government's wanted list that was given by Karzai to Pakistani authorities in April.

He asked the "mujahaddeen" everywhere "to unite and organize their forces and to attack the U.S. interests everywhere."

U.S. and allied troops have come under increasing attacks in recent months reportedly from remnants of al-Qaeda and Taliban.

In another development, the U.S. military claimed Tuesday that a major operation launched in eastern Afghanistan against Taliban and al-Qaeda along the Pakistani border had been successful.

"The operation was successful," U.S. military spokesman Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Lefforge told reporters at Bagram Air Base 50 kilometres (31 miles) north of Kabul.

He said the military operation was continuing but was likely to end later Tuesday, declining to give further details.

Some 500 U.S.-led troops and Afghan forces launched what was dubbed Operation Unified Resolve last week in Nangarhar, described formerly as an al-Qaeda stronghold and Kunar provinces on the border with Pakistan.

The operation, planned and conducted in close cooperation with President Karzai and local authorities, is aimed at blocking cross-border routes allegedly used by Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters to launch attacks in Afghanistan.

Some 2,000 Pakistani soldiers were carrying out similar military operations on their side of the border but Islamabad claimed it was not a joint operation.

The operation objectives were "to kill, capture and deny sanctuary to anti-coalition forces, block the ability of anti-coalition elements to be able to go from Afghanistan to Pakistan," U.S. military spokesman Colonel Rodney Davis said after the operation was launched.

"The east and the southern portion of Afghanistan is where we have found most of our anti-coalition activity," he argued.