BAGRAM AIR BASE, March 8: The US military said on Saturday it was holding seven men in Afghanistan linked to bomb plots against US forces as efforts to track Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden intensified in Pakistan.

US military spokesman Colonel Roger King said the men were seized by special forces in Helmand province, which stretches from Afghanistan’s centre to its southern border with Balochistan.

“These people were taken under control based upon intelligence that we’ve had relative to planning attacks on coalition forces,” he told reporters at Bagram air base.

“There was material found in their possession that led us to believe the information we had about them was true, information about building bombs.”

Mr King joined in a chorus of denial of reports cited by a Pakistani regional official that two sons of Al Qaeda chief Osama had been captured in southwestern Afghanistan where its borders with Pakistan and Iran meet.

The claim on Friday by Sardar Sanaullah Zehri, the home minister of Balochistan province, has also been denied by Pakistan’s central government, Afghan and US officials.

Mr King said the coalition had no troops operating in the corner of Afghanistan’s southwestern Nimroz province, as claimed by Zehri, and none had been in the area for several weeks.

Pakistani officials have said that Osama’s Egyptian deputy Ayman al-Zawahri is being hunted along the 1,600 kilometre border between Afghanistan and Balochistan.—AFP