December 15, 2001	Saturday	Ramazan 29, 1422

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TORA BORA, Dec 14: Al-Qaeda fighters cornered in the eastern Afghan highlands came under heavy air and ground attack on Friday as non-stop US air raids continued into the night and special forces pursued their hunt for their leader, Osama bin Laden.

US President George W. Bush reiterated that he wants Osama “dead or alive”.

“Either way. It doesn’t matter to me,” he said while talking to reporters at the White House.

But the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) news agency, quoting unnamed sources, said Osama had left Tora Bora last month for an unknown destination.

The United States and its allies said a videotape released Thursday by the Pentagon, showing Osama bin Laden gloating over the destruction of the World Trade Center, was powerful evidence of his guilt in the September 11 attacks.

Many in the Muslim world were skeptical.

Bush, who had the final say on whether the tape should released or not, explained in Washington that he decided to show it because he “knew that the tape would be a devastating declaration of guilt for this evil person.”

In southern Afghanistan, 200 US Marines, joined by Australian troops, swept into the Kandahar airport by land and by air and cleared the facility of mines and booby traps, but said unspecified “threats” delayed its opening to flights.

US warplanes bombed ridges of the White Mountains throughout the day and night, when an AC-130 gunship joined the fray, opening up with its heavy cannon and machineguns, the noise of its engines and weapons clearly heard in the dark.

One jet dropped 10 bombs on Melawa mountain, near Tora Bora, as the din of the ground battle — automatic weapons, machineguns and mortars — resounded through the two valleys where Osama’s forces are trapped.

About 100 Al-Qaeda fighters, warplanes pounding their positions, were surrounded on a ridge close to a network of caves and tunnels under Tora Bora mountain, militia commander Hazrat Ali said.

“The Al-Qaeda people on Tora Bora are finished,” he said. “I hope that we will finish them off tonight — if not, by midday tomorrow they will be 100 percent beaten.”

Ali said there was no sign of Osama in positions seized on Friday, but he did not discount the possibility that he was still in the region.

The Pentagon acknowledged that it is unsure of his exact whereabouts, but said he is believed to be somewhere in the area.

“We don’t know exactly where he is,” spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said. “We get pieces of information and reports of all kinds, some of which could lead you to believe that he is somewhere in that region. But we do not have his precise location.

“If we knew where he was, we’d probably have him,” she added.

The AIP said Osama left Tora Bora before the attacks began 10 days ago.

The agency gave a rough timetable of his movements, saying he was in Jalalabad when the Taliban evacuated Kabul on Nov 12.

He then moved to Tora Bora, where he stayed “until the 10th day of Ramazan” — Nov 26 — when he left for “an unnamed place”.

MILITARY OFFICIAL: A senior US military official said he believed Osama was among the Al-Qaeda fighters.

A combination of indications — the fierceness of the fighting, reported sightings of Osama by Afghan troops, and anecdotal information from a variety of intelligence sources — points to his presence among the fighters in the Agam and Wazir valleys, said the official.

“No one of those by itself would be very convincing, but when all three of those things come to the same conclusion, you’d better pay attention and at least check it out and make that the area of your focus,” the official said.

The official said the two valleys where Al-Qaeda fighters were concentrated run north and south from Afghanistan into Pakistan.

“To the south, opening up into Pakistan, you’ve got Pakistani troops in perfect blocking position,” he said. “In the north, in the Agam valley, you’ve got the fighters of Hazrat Ali, and coming down from the north in the Wazir valley you’ve got the fighters of Mohammad Zaman.”

“They are fighting Al-Qaeda fighters in both valleys, and the fighting is really fierce.”

The fighting was most intense in the Agam valley, the official said.

The rugged terrain favours the Al-Qaeda defenders, even though they are outnumbered by the Afghan troops, he added.

US special forces also were moving down the valleys with the Afghan fighters, calling in air strikes by aircraft using satellite-guided bombs and other precision guided weapons, according to the official.

He, however, denied reports that more 15,000-pound bombs have been dropped. The huge bomb, the largest conventional weapon in the US arsenal, was last dropped on Sunday.

At the same time, the official noted that several other areas in Afghanistan have not been ruled out as places where Osama could be hiding, acknowledging that there were “conflicting indications that he’s elsewhere”.

The military had less confidence in those reports, he said, “but you just can’t write them off”.

He said the military did not give much credence to reports that Osama was out of Afghanistan. “We think that is pure deception.” —AFP