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.
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
North Korea yesterday fired a ballistic missile, Seoul’s military said, about a week after US President Donald Trump approved South Korea’s plan to build a nuclear-powered submarine. Analysts have said Seoul’s plan to construct one of the nuclear-driven vessels would likely draw an aggressive response from Pyongyang. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said North Korea fired an unidentified ballistic missile toward the East Sea, referring to the body of water also known as the Sea of Japan. The missile landed in the sea outside Japan’s economic waters and no damage or injuries had been reported, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said. The missile
RSS