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Tora Bora over-run, Osama eludes capture
TORA BORA, DEC. 16. The Saudi dissident, Osama bin Laden, prime suspect in the September 11 terror attacks on the U.S., is no longer in the eastern Tora Bora mountains of Afghanistan, a senior anti-Taliban commander said today. And the remnants of his Al-Qaeda forces had been virtually wiped out.``We have cleared Al-Qaeda from our land. We did the job,'' Haji Zaman, top military commander in the eastern Jalalabad region, told presspersons, ``this is the last day for the Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.''
Osama had fled, but this would not prevent his fighters from completing a mopping-up operation. ``We are going to search the mountains metre by metre.''
Another senior commander, Mr. Hazrat Ali, said his men had killed 200 of Osama's fighters in Tora Bora.``We took 25 prisoners and killed 200 Al-Qaeda fighters.'' Of Osama he said, ``he has not yet been captured.''
Rumsfeld in Kabul
The U.S. Defence Secretary, Mr. Donald Rumsfeld, arrived near Kabul - the first senior American official to visit since the Afghan and the U.S. forces ousted the Taliban. The U.S. fighter jets screamed through the sky before his plane touched down at the Bagram airbase, where he met the American troops.
He held talks in an abandoned hangar with Mr. Hamid Karzai, who will head the interim government, around a table improvised from metal packing cases.
Mr. Rumsfeld told Mr. Karzai that the U.S. did not covet any territory in Afghanistan. ``From the very beginning, we have tried to make it clear that our operation here was not against Afghanistan, against the people, against a religion. It was against terrorism... We were here for the sole purpose of expelling terrorists from the country and establishing a government that would not harbour terrorism.''
Marines injured
Three U.S. Marines were injured, one seriously, when one of them stepped on a landmine at the airport outside Kandahar. Capt. David Romley, a Marines spokesman, said the explosion occurred at the southern end of the runway around 1.00 p.m. No information about the wounded Marines was released.
Osama alive, says Powell
Meanwhile, the U.S. Secretary of State, Gen. Colin Powell, said today that Osama was believed to be still alive and at large, a report from Washington said.
``We have no reason to believe that he has been either killed or captured,'' Gen. Powell told NBC's ``Meet the press''. ``We don't know where he is,'' he added.
Fleeing fighters arrested
The Pakistani authorities arrested 31 Arabs believed to have fled besieged bases of the Al-Qaeda, reports from Islamabad said. The Arabs, mainly young Yemenis, were detained in the tribal areas of the North West Frontier Province and are being held in jail in the town of Parachinar near the border, The Daily said.
Afghans celebrate Id
War took a short holiday in Afghanistan while women in new clothes and men in shiny shoes strolled outside to begin celebrating Id-ul-Fitr. Gunfire of the celebratory kind echoed in the streets of Kandahar. Holding hands, a group of women and girls walked in gleaming red dresses, something that would have invited severe punishment from the fundamentalist Taliban.
And in Tora Bora, some Eastern Alliance fighters briefly laid down their Kalishnikovs early today to celebrate at village mosques. - AP, AFP, Reuters
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