BAGRAM, May 7: Coalition forces have dug up 23 graves in an Al Qaeda cemetery in Afghanistan and taken DNA samples from the corpses after information that Osama bin Laden had been in the area, officers said on Tuesday.

The graves were all in a cemetery in the village of Ale Qehl, in the mountainous Tora Bora region of eastern Afghanistan, said Captain Phillip Nicholson, the commander of the Canadian mission that dug up the graves.

“He (Osama bin Laden) was located in the area at approximately the same time (that the 23 were killed),” he said.

But he played down hopes that the body of Osama had been found. “I don’t think anyone jumped up in jubilation,” he said.

Nicholson said the 23 victims were killed while fleeing caves to the village during one of the major battles of the Afghan campaign in the Tora Bora region in December.

“Obviously when we came across gravesites as a result of that attack we were very interested,” he said.

The bodies were “basically all part of (Osama’s) low-level fighters in the area or part of his personal protection team”, he said.

“A lot of the bodies had been interred for four months now and it was very difficult to determine visually who anybody could have been.

“It’s quite possible, and hopefully the DNA sampling will reveal something, that some of them might have been (Osama) bin Laden’s lieutenants,” he added.

Asked how reliable the information was that Osama had been in the vicinity, Nicholson said: “That’s very reliable.”

Four hundred Canadian soldiers were deployed to the Tora Bora region four days ago to search caves and other former Al Qaeda positions.

Nicholson said the excavations at the graveyard had not been part of their original brief, but villagers had told the troops about the site.

The work had been “arduous, revolting, but we took great care to leave (the cemetery) in better condition that we found it”, he said. The bodies had been collected and brought to the cemetery by villagers on the instructions of a local Taliban leader.

“What piqued our interest was a man from Pakistan had travelled all the way to pray on this site,” Nicholson said.—AFP