Pakistani troops battling suspected al-Qaeda fighters in Pakistan's lawless north on Monday discovered a mile-long tunnel running through the battlefield, through which senior al-Qaeda members may have escaped, officials said.
Several tunnels were discovered leading from a huddle of fiercely defended mud fortresses near Afghanistan's border, which have been besieged by a force of 7,000 Pakistani troops for almost a week. The tunnels were said to have led to a nearby dry riverbed running along the border.
Brigadier Mahmood Shah, security chief of Pakistan's northern tribal region, said the longest tunnel was more than a mile (1.6km) long, and could have been used as an escape route.
"There is a possibility that the tunnel may have been used at the start of the operation," he said.
Senior Pakistani officials have suggested that al-Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, could be among the hundreds of besieged fighters. Seeking to explain the ferocity of resistance, President Pervez Musharraf said last week that a "high-value" target was probably among them.
US intelligence operatives are assisting the Pakistani army in the battle, in which more than 40 suspected terrorists, soldiers and civilians have been killed.
A senior US commander, General John Abizaid, visited Islamabad on Monday, raising speculation that the Pakistani army could be on the verge of capturing a major al-Qaeda prize. But Western diplomats in Islamabad were sceptical. The mud fortresses would be too obvious a hiding place, they said.
"It's very hard to believe al-Zawahiri has been hiding in what amounts to a military camp," said one diplomat. "Or if he is there, it's impossible to believe that the Pakistani intelligence services didn't know about it a long time ago."
Army officials said on Monday they were testing the DNA of six suspected foreign fighters killed in the battle, while interrogating 123 captured fighters. Five of the bodies were exhibited to journalists at an army hospital in the northern city of Rawalpindi on Monday. The nationalities of the dead men were impossible to determine.
"For us, every foreigner who is caught or killed is important because we do not know who they are," army spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan said. "We took the decision to do DNA tests to confirm the identities of these people. I cannot say if any among them is al-Zawahiri."
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