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Omar flees as US soldier killed by enemy gunfire

The fugitive Taliban leader has eluded a manhunt in the mountains of southern Afghanistan, a local official said yesterday.

Mullah Mohammad Omar may have evaded encircling Afghan and US forces by motorcycle, according to one report from Kandahar, his former stronghold. But, deepening the mystery, another official said he may never have been in that area at all.

Three months after the US went to war in response to the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, the first American soldier was killed by enemy fire in the east of the country, in an area where US troops are hunting remnants of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

The new US envoy to Kabul said the US bombing campaign, launched on Oct. 7, would not end until its aims were met, despite concern among Afghanistan's new anti-Taliban leaders at apparent civilian casualties in recent strikes.

Yet not only has the trail gone cold for bin Laden, the Saudi-born militant Washington blames for the Sept. 11 attacks, but that of his Afghan protector also seems to have been lost, just a day after the new rulers in Kabul said they felt close to capturing Omar at Baghran, 160km northwest of Kandahar.

"There aren't any Taliban and al-Qaeda in Baghran now," said an official speaking for Kandahar's anti-Taliban intelligence chief, Haji Gullalai. "Mullah Omar isn't in Baghran either.

US planes bombed a suspected al-Qaeda base near Khost on Thursday and Friday amid concerns bin Laden's fighters could be trying to regroup. Near Gardez, west of Khost, Sergeant First Class Nathan Ross Chapman, 31, of the 1st Special Forces Group, was killed in a gunbattle on Friday.

Ten other US personnel have died in the war but Chapman was the first soldier killed by enemy fire.
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