Several thousand Pakistani troops backed by helicopter gunships yesterday fought fierce clashes with heavily armed gunmen believed to have been protecting a top al-Qaeda leader close to the Afghan border.
Officials said al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri may have narrowly escaped the South Waziristan tribal village during heavy clashes three days ago which left at least 15 soldiers and 24 militants dead.
Up to 100 militants were still putting up fierce resistance yesterday, firing mortars and small arms at thousands of army and paramilitary troops who were raiding tribesmen's homes in five villages near the district capital Wana within an area around 6km2 in size.
"The militants appear to be well dug in in mud fortresses. They appear to be determined to fight till the end," spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan said.
Pakistani officials said the intense fighting since Tuesday indicated the militants were protecting an al-Qaeda leader and there was a "strong possibility" it was Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's right-hand man and personal doctor.
But a senior security official said yesterday that he could have escaped on Tuesday, and a Taliban spokesman claimed both Zawahiri and bin Laden were safe in Afghanistan.
"He may have slipped the net," the official said.
The frenzied speculation was triggered by the sighting of a foreigner being whisked away at high speed in a bullet-proof vehicle on Tuesday when paramilitaries went searching for tribesmen wanted for sheltering al-Qaeda fugitives.
The landcruiser burst suddenly out of a tribal compound, two other landcruisers emerged to protect it, and scores of fighters appeared from several directions, hurling grenades and firing at the paramilitaries.
The unit of 50 troops was "virtually wiped out," the official said.
Fifteen were killed, 22 were injured and another 13 were missing.
"The way he was whisked away, the way fighters sprang from nowhere, that made us believe that if it was not bin Laden, and we're sure it was not, that it was his deputy," the official said. "We can't think of another al-Qaeda leader who could have such high protocol and such sophisticated tight defense."
The Pakistani operation in the rugged autonomous tribal region of South Waziristan, some 300km west of Islamabad coincides with similar activity by US and Afghan forces in Afghanistan in a major new offensive to catch bin Laden and other al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders.
The US House of Representatives on Thursday doubled the reward for bin Laden's capture to US$50 million. A US$25-million reward remains on the head of Zawahiri, considered the brains of al-Qaeda and a key planner of the Sept, 11, 2001, attacks on the US.
The US military said it had trained intense surveillance on the Waziristan area, including Predator drones.
President Pervez Musharraf said late Thursday that his forces believed they had a "high value target" surrounded.
"We feel that there may be a high-value target. I can't say who," said Musharraf, who on Thursday held talks in Islamabad with US Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Two Pakistani government officials said it was believed that the militants had beens protecting Zawahiri, who along with bin Laden escaped the dragnet of US forces after the October 2001 war in Afghanistan.
"This is a strong possibility," said one official.
In Washington, US National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said any capture of Zawahiri would be a major blow to al-Qaeda.
"Were it true, it would be a major step forward in the war on terrorism, because he's obviously an extremely important figure," Rice told CNN.
Zawahiri, 52, is a former leader of the Egyptian Jihad movement which was implicated in the 1981 assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and the 1997 massacre of foreign tourists at Luxor on the Nile River.
He has been indicted over the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, and often appears at bin Laden's side in taped interviews distributed by al-Qaeda.
In a taped message released on Feb. 24, a man claiming to be Zawahiri warned US President George W. Bush to step up security and threatened new attacks on the US.
DOUBLE-MURDER CASE: The officer told the dispatcher he would check the locations of the callers, but instead headed to a pizzeria, remaining there for about an hour A New Jersey officer has been charged with misconduct after prosecutors said he did not quickly respond to and properly investigate reports of a shooting that turned out to be a double murder, instead allegedly stopping at an ATM and pizzeria. Franklin Township Police Sergeant Kevin Bollaro was the on-duty officer on the evening of Aug. 1, when police received 911 calls reporting gunshots and screaming in Pittstown, about 96km from Manhattan in central New Jersey, Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renee Robeson’s office said. However, rather than responding immediately, prosecutors said GPS data and surveillance video showed Bollaro drove about 3km
‘MOTHER’ OF THAILAND: In her glamorous heyday in the 1960s, former Thai queen Sirikit mingled with US presidents and superstars such as Elvis Presley The year-long funeral ceremony of former Thai queen Sirikit started yesterday, with grieving royalists set to salute the procession bringing her body to lie in state at Bangkok’s Grand Palace. Members of the royal family are venerated in Thailand, treated by many as semi-divine figures, and lavished with glowing media coverage and gold-adorned portraits hanging in public spaces and private homes nationwide. Sirikit, the mother of Thai King Vajiralongkorn and widow of the nation’s longest-reigning monarch, died late on Friday at the age of 93. Black-and-white tributes to the royal matriarch are being beamed onto towering digital advertizing billboards, on
Tens of thousands of people on Saturday took to the streets of Spain’s eastern city of Valencia to mark the first anniversary of floods that killed 229 people and to denounce the handling of the disaster. Demonstrators, many carrying photos of the victims, called on regional government head Carlos Mazon to resign over what they said was the slow response to one of Europe’s deadliest natural disasters in decades. “People are still really angry,” said Rosa Cerros, a 42-year-old government worker who took part with her husband and two young daughters. “Why weren’t people evacuated? Its incomprehensible,” she said. Mazon’s
POWER ABUSE WORRY: Some people warned that the broad language of the treaty could lead to overreach by authorities and enable the repression of government critics Countries signed their first UN treaty targeting cybercrime in Hanoi yesterday, despite opposition from an unlikely band of tech companies and rights groups warning of expanded state surveillance. The new global legal framework aims to bolster international cooperation to fight digital crimes, from child pornography to transnational cyberscams and money laundering. More than 60 countries signed the declaration, which means it would go into force once ratified by those states. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the signing as an “important milestone,” and that it was “only the beginning.” “Every day, sophisticated scams destroy families, steal migrants and drain billions of dollars from our economy...
RSS