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New fear: bin Laden escape
Compiled from Times wires TORA BORA, Afghanistan -- American air crews attempted to bomb al-Qaida holdouts into submission Wednesday, but some U.S. and Afghan leaders feared that their most coveted prey -- Osama bin Laden -- could slip away, or already has. Officials at the Pentagon and other senior U.S. officials said they thought bin Laden was still in Afghanistan, but they seemed less certain than they had been just a few days earlier. "We do not know who is escaping and who is not," said Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. U.S. warplanes repeatedly pounded al-Qaida warriors, cornered in a canyon of Tora Bora mountain, as talks between Afghan tribal leaders and al-Qaida representatives stretched, unresolved, through a second day. Some accounts mentioned a new deadline of noon today for al-Qaida's surrender, but confusion prevailed and a previous deadline expired Wednesday with little effect. As many as 40 U.S. Special Forces troops and 60 members of Britain's elite Special Air Service are on the ground in the rugged area, helping in the hunt for bin Laden and any of his lieutenants who remain. Afghan commanders said the Americans were pressing their Afghan allies for a new attack, promising that U.S. and British forces would take a broader role in the ground battle. But Pace said that U.S. troops would continue to focus on supporting opposition commanders and calling in airstrikes, not directly attacking al-Qaida fighters or searching caves. Some American officials and Afghan tribal leaders expressed concern that bin Laden, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and some top aides would exploit -- or already have exploited -- the confused battle front to escape into northwestern Pakistan. U.S. military officials said they believed bin Laden and the others were still in Afghanistan, and they were taking steps to keep them there. "We have various means of surveilling the battlefield," Pace said. "Some from satellites, some from airplanes, some from eyes on the ground." When alerted to fleeing al-Qaida, "we respond either by putting bombs on target or providing the information to the coalition leader so he can have his troops assault the objective." Still, he conceded that small groups of enemy fighters could slip away. "There are multiple routes of ingress and egress, so it is certainly conceivable that groups of two, three, 15, 20 could, walking out of there, in fact, get out," he said. Asked if any high-ranking al-Qaida or Taliban leaders had been captured by U.S. forces, Pace said: "To my knowledge, no, not yet." The Christian Science Monitor reported on its Web site Wednesday that bin Laden might have fled to Pakistan 10 days ago with the help of local tribesmen. Bin Laden deputized his son, Salah Uddin, 19, to lead the loyalists in Tora Bora, according to the newspaper. The report, which could not be corroborated, quoted Abu Jaffer, described as a senior al-Qaida operative and Saudi financier. The chief spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, said he would view such reports "with a healthy dose of skepticism." On Tora Bora, a lone B-52 bomber began Wednesday's air assault, flying in broad circles before heading into its bombing run around 9:30 a.m. The B-52 struck four times before noon, its discharges of high explosives raising huge, billowing clouds of gray-black smoke. A jet fighter launched a follow-up strike. Afghan warriors said the airstrikes were directed from the ground by U.S. Special Forces. At the same time, confusion arose over the failure of bin Laden's Arab al-Qaida fighters to surrender by an 8 a.m. Wednesday deadline they supposedly had accepted after being surrounded a day earlier. Afghan forces declared a cease-fire after they overran al-Qaida's mountain stronghold of caves, bunkers and tunnels, but U.S. aircraft maintained their attacks. Adding to the murkiness was a feud between Afghan commanders over the purported surrender, which called for the Arabs to lay down their arms in exchange for being turned over to the United Nations rather than the United States. The agreement was brokered by Haji Zaman, military chief of the Jalalabad region, but was opposed by Haji Zahir, son of the governor of Naghahar province. "Because I was not involved and I did not agree, I don't believe in the agreement," Zahir said. "I was not involved in the cease-fire yesterday, and two of my men were killed and a third one's body is being carried in now." A third senior commander, Hazrat Ali, said the deadline for the Arabs' surrender was being extended until noon today. "We want Osama alive," Ali said. "If they don't give us Osama, we are preparing ourselves for a big offensive." About 1,200 al-Qaida fighters are still hiding out in the area, Ali said. AL-QAIDA LEADERS BELIEVED KILLED: The New York Times reported Wednesday that there is credible evidence that three senior al-Qaida leaders had been killed by the U.S. bombing campaign, causing serious disruptions to the terrorist network. Quoting intelligence officials, the newspaper said that the CIA believed that Tariq Anwar al-Sayyid Ahmad, an Egyptian who had been the chief of the special action committee of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and a longtime bin Laden associate, was killed in the bombing of a building in Khost, in mid-November. The CIA also believes that Mohammed Salah, an al-Qaida lieutenant and a former operations officer for Egyptian Islamic Jihad, was killed in mid-November in a bombing also in the Khost area. These reports follow earlier ones that Mohammed Atef, al-Qaida's chief of military operations and another veteran of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, died last month in the bombing of a building near Kabul.
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From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
