NEW YORK, May 5: The Afghan chief of military intelligence, Hazrat Uddin, has said that he has received “credible reports” that Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenant Ayman al Zawahiri, were seen inside Pakistan, Newsweek reported in its latest issue on Monday.

The source said that Osama trimmed his beard and appeared healthy, Hazrat Uddin told the magazine. A second Afghan commander, Kamal Khan Zadran, says he thinks Osama’s men are trying to keep their leader safe inside Pakistan. “The local Al Qaeda network is active,” he says. “They’re working out their plans.” While there are false sightings of Osama every day and there’s no solid proof he’s even alive, privately, many terrorism experts think Uddin is on the right track the weekly said.

Both Hazrat Uddin and Zadran are stationed in the Afghan City of Khost, just over the mountain pass from Miram Shah, a corner of Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province, east of Afghanistan. Foreign troops are said to be roaming through that high country, the Newsweek said.

The weekly said that also in Khost, an Afghan intelligence official in daily contact with the Americans says an operation launched on April 30 called Mountain Lion — using British, Australian and US 101st Airborne commandos to seek out possible Al Qaeda hideouts — will expand into a major offensive on both sides of the border. “They have a plan to go into Miram Shah to do an operation,” he says. “There are 1,200 Americans and British in the tribal areas right now. They’re working very hard. They’re in a hurry.”

Officially, the Pentagon says there are no foreign troops inside Pakistan other than some logistical support personnel and it won’t even say where the commandos are searching.

Newsweek says inside Afghanistan, at a remote smuggler’s crossing called Ghulam Khan, the local Afghan commander Mohammed Yaqoob has a wireless connection to an American handler identified only as Jim.