Worldandnation: Doom closes in on al-Qaida

Doom closes in on al-Qaida

Afghan troops, helped by American and British commandos, have what may be the last of Osama bin Laden's fighters cornered.

Compiled from Times wires

TORA BORA, Afghanistan -- American and British commandos, operating behind a screen of local Afghan fighters, reportedly had the last remnants of Osama bin Laden's followers -- and perhaps the chief terrorist himself -- cornered Friday night on a mountain ridge.

"Al-Qaida is finished," proclaimed commander Hazrat Ali, the ranking Afghan tribal military leader, referring to bin Laden's terrorist network. "They are surrounded."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, briefing reporters en route from Washington to Central Asia, said that the Afghan fighters had advanced more than a mile and captured 50 al-Qaida fighters during one eight-hour period of intense fighting.

U.S. fighter jets and bombers dropped 180 bombs during that surge, and AC-130 gunships strafed al-Qaida positions, Rumsfeld said. Between 230 and 240 bombs, many weighing 2,000 pounds, were dropped on the same region Thursday.

The commander of U.S. operations in Afghanistan, Gen. Tommy Franks, said the Afghan forces are pushing the al-Qaida fighters from the north, while the Pakistani military has taken up positions blocking the border to the south. "It sort of becomes a hammer and an anvil," Franks said in Tampa.

He said 300 to 1,000 enemy fighters were caught between Ali's forces and Pakistani border patrols.

Haji Zahir, another Afghan commander, said the ridge that the holdouts were defending "is their last position in Afghanistan." With that exception, he said, "the places we were aiming to capture, we captured all of them" in an offensive that began Thursday.

As for bin Laden himself, the main object of the American-led hunt, Ali told journalists at a command post of two stone huts high on the mountain: "There is one specific cave. We can see it. We are trying to reach it."

Walkie-talkies hummed through the day with appeals from Ali to al-Qaida fighters to surrender. But they were rebuffed.

"Where is the big guy?" Ali asked an al-Qaida representative at one point during the radio conversation, referring to bin Laden. "This is not the right time to disclose that," said the main al-Qaida negotiator, Mairajuddin, who is also known as Abu Salahaddin.

Atiqullah Racham, a top aide to Zahir, said heavy U.S. bombing prevented fighters from entering the cave Friday, but "tomorrow we hope to have good news for you: the fall of al-Qaida."

Franks said the fierceness of the battle near Tora Bora provided one indication that al-Qaida forces might be shielding bin Laden. But he cautioned that the Pentagon has received differing information from surveillance aircraft, opposition sources and U.S. forces that had made it difficult to pinpoint bin Laden's whereabouts. He also declined to rule out the possibility that bin Laden had escaped into Pakistan.

Asked whether the United States would prefer to capture or kill bin Laden, President Bush told reporters in the Oval Office: "I don't care. Dead or alive, either way. I mean, it doesn't matter to me."

"I don't know whether we're going to get him tomorrow or a month from now or a year from now," Bush added. "But we're going to get him."

After more than a week of apparent impasse, events moved swiftly in eastern Afghanistan on Friday, including sporadic ground fighting, heavy American bombing and attempts to negotiate a surrender. At midday Friday, journalists, who had been confined to a rear position Thursday, were allowed to go up the mountain in a caravan of pickup trucks to catch closer glimpses of the fighting, where U.S. bombs fell in a tight pattern along a ridge.

Bombs were still falling on the contested ridgeline at twilight, after the journalists were ordered out of the area by the local Afghan fighters. Friday night, two helicopters touched down at the small airport in Jalalabad and unloaded a large quantity of small arms and four men, who piled into waiting vehicles and drove toward the mountains at the orders of Ali.

The increasing presence of U.S. troops in the White Mountains was evident Friday. More than 20 could be seen accompanying truckloads of Afghan fighters up the mountainside toward the front lines, including one squeezed into a seat next to Ali, as their vehicle bounced over the rutted roadway toward the Afghans' command post.

Mohammad Ali, a 25-year-old fighter, said 12 Americans had accompanied his group of troops on Thursday. "They were coordinating," he said. "They had weapons but didn't fire."

One Afghan who participated in an overnight gun battle said at least five American military personnel were with each Afghan unit. "We asked them, "Why did you come to this place?' " said Asad Yaah. "They said, "To help you.' "

U.S. forces appeared to be using a laser to mark targets for laser-guided munitions. Khawri, an Afghan fighter who uses one name, said that one bomb hit an al-Qaida machine-gun nest soon after the targeting was complete.

"We went up there and there was nothing left. Everything was destroyed," Khawri said. "There was one dead person. The body was in the branches of a tree."

The local fighters reported that two U.S. Special Forces soldiers were slightly wounded during the fighting, but Franks said he had heard only that other allied soldiers, possibly British or Australian commandos, had been wounded Friday.

In other developments Friday:

U.S. officials said that more than 300 al-Qaida fighters have surrendered to Afghan opposition forces in eastern Afghanistan in recent days, adding to an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 terrorist or Taliban prisoners being held by rebel groups elsewhere in the country.

The prisoners are part of what U.S. officials say is an expanding intelligence-gathering operation in Afghanistan which has already produced names and phone numbers of al-Qaida members in other countries and led to some additional arrests.

Pakistan sent helicopter gunships to the skies and troops on horses and mules to caves along its border with Afghanistan to keep bin Laden and his allies from sneaking into the country, officials said. "We have made it impossible for bin Laden to enter our country," said Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider.