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.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
RSS