December 12, 2001	Wednesday	Ramazan 26, 1422

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PESHAWAR, Dec 11: Al Qaeda fighters holed up in the mountains of Tora Bora area in eastern Afghanistan have agreed to surrender to the anti-Taliban eastern Alliance on Tuesday, a military commander spearheading the attack against Osama bin Laden’s last hideout in Afghanistan said.

“There was intense fighting in the morning. At around 2pm (Afghanistan Standard Time), they called us on the wireless and informed us of their willingness to surrender and lay down their weapons by Wednesday morning”, Haji Mohammad Zaman claimed in an interview with the BBC Pushto Service. He said that the Al Qaeda fighters would come out of their caves until 8am local time on Wednesday and surrender.

“They said that since they were in big number and were spread all over the area, they would get together tonight and discuss the surrender”, he said. “We will get in touch again and discuss and implement the surrender plan. I have told them they would come out in groups and lay down their weapons.”

Zaman, who is the military commander of Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province, said the Al Qaeda fighters had told him that they would prefer to give up and hand themselves over to the UN. He said that he had assured the Al Qaeda fighters that they would not be harmed. “If they are willing to surrender then what is the use of killing of them. We want them out of our area. It is not permissible in Islam to kill those who surrender. This is against human rights.”

Zaman had earlier told Dawn that the Al Qaeda fighters, numbering between 1,000 to 1,500, were abandoning their positions and climbing further up into the mountains.

He said that he was confident that Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was among the foreign fighters holed up in the Tora Bora area situated in the foothill of Spin Ghar mountain range, 56 km to the south of Jalalabad, capital of Nangarhar.

Tora Bora with natural fortification since the Mujahideen time during Soviet invasion of Afghanistan served as Osama’s first base upon his return to Afghanistan in May 1996.

“He is there and I am certain about it. Why else would I lose my sleep”, he said. “There is no escape route for them. We have encircled them from all sides. There is very little chance of them sneaking into Pakistan”, he told Dawn by telephone from Jalalabad.

Jalalabad’s security chief Hazrat Ali said he was convinced Osama and his deputy Aiman Al Zawaheri were hiding in Tora Bora. “We had information from the local population as well as our intelligence sources that he [Osama] remains there.

He was seen on Monday, and people who were with him on Tuesday were overheard speaking to him over their wireless,” Ali said.

A Pakistani journalist who visited the fighting scene said he had seen women and children among the Arab fighters using a zoom lens from a distance.

He said that the Arab fighters had controlled fire. “It looks like they want to dig in for a long time. Their fire is controlled. It seems they don’t want to exhaust their munitions”, he said

Zaman said that the US B-52 bombers continued to pound the Tora Bora complex throughout the day.