Top al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan have fled sanctuaries near the Afghan border to cities and other countries after army raids, President Pervez Mushar-raf said yesterday.
Some of those fleeing were among the 30 or so suspects rounded up by Pakistani security agencies since mid-July, including a communications expert and a Tanzanian suspect in the 1998 East Africa US embassy bombings.
"Authentic information has revealed these terrorist masterminds were relocating from the mountainous and tribal regions in the north to other cities and even other countries," Musharraf told state-run Pakistan Television.
The assaults on Al-Qaeda sanctuaries in February and March in South Waziristan, the remotest of seven tribal districts hugging the porous Afghan border, had sent them scattering across Pakistan and abroad.
"Military operations in Wana, Shakai, Santoi and Mantoi villages in South Waziristan have uprooted these terrorists to move away to other cities and countries," he said.
The captures some months later of computer whiz Naeem Noor Khan and of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the suspect in the Kenya and Tanzania bombings, yielded a trove of information on Osama bin Laden's network.
This in turn led to the reported uncovering of terror plots in Britain, Pakistan and the US, terror alerts in US cities and the arrests of 12 al-Qaeda suspects in Britain, including operative Abu Eisa al-Hindi.
Musharraf traced the al-Qaeda planners' presence in Pakistan to the US-led military campaign to oust Afghanistan's Taliban regime in late 2001.
"These elements came to Afghanistan after the 9/11 events, where the military operations forced them to hide in the mountainous region along the Pak-Afghan border and in cities," he said.
He said top operatives like Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and Abu Zubayda had initially hidden in crowded cities.
But their captures in March 2003 and March 2002 respectively from Rawalpindi and Faisalabad had panicked their cohorts into taking refuge in remote frontier tribal areas.
"The capture of 500 to 600 al-Qaeda operatives, including top al-Qaeda leaders Khalid Sheikh (Mohammed) and Abu Zubayda from different cities, forced them to take refuge mostly in South Waziristan," Musharraf said.
Al-Qaeda operated by using foreign masterminds who enlisted Pakistani militants, he said.
"Masterminds were found to be foreigners who were using local extremists for planning and executing the terrorist activities in the country," he said.
"We are attacking the masterminds to dry up the source of terrorism and they are on the run," he said. "We are on the winning side."
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese