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`Osama voice' picked up on radio
- PTI, AFP, Reuters
WASHINGTON, DEC. 15. U.S. troops hunting accused terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden have detected his distinctive voice giving orders via hand-held radio to his Al-Qaeda fighters in eastern Afghanistan, the Washington Times reported today.
Officials told the daily that the voice has been positively matched to known recordings of Osama, providing evidence that he remains somewhere in the Tora Bora region of the White Mountains. ``They have picked him up on very short-range radio,'' a senior official said, adding that Al-Qaeda men had been detected responding to their leader.
The sources told the Washington Times that the electronic monitoring is being carried out by special operations troops on the ground, and by spy planes and satellites as part of an intelligence dragnet to help U.S. forces kill or capture Osama.
Many captured
Several Al-Qaeda fighters were captured or killed today after they put a stiff resistance to U.S. and Afghan forces making the first major advance against the Al-Qaeda's last known stronghold in the Tora Bora caves. A total of 33 bodies were found while four fighters were captured. At least 50 surrendered.
The Alliance forces and a small number of elite American troops advanced about 2 km on the ground near Tora Bora as hundreds of U.S. bombs fell on the caves.
The U.S. Defence Secretary, Mr. Donald Rumsfeld, said the Alliance forces were doing most of the fighting while the American commandos were engaged mostly in directing U.S. air strikes to their targets.
Osama is believed to be among his diehard followers cornered in the Tora Bora area. The Pentagon estimated that there were between 300 and 1,000 of those fighters.
Alliance commanders said the doggedness and resistance of the Al-Qaeda fighters indicated that they were defending their leader even as the recent infusion of American special troops into the mountainous area has allowed U.S. planes to step up their assault.
``A very energetic battle is still under way,'' Mr. Rumsfeld said amidst reports that groups of Al-Qaeda fighters were reported to be fleeing towards Pakistan.
Pakistani border guards today arrested 31 Arab militants crossing into the Kurram tribal area from the Tora Bora area. A senior Pakistani official said in Peshawar that none of them, hailing from Yemen, was carrying arms and none had been wounded in the U.S. air strikes. Four other Arab militants were arrested yesterday when they crossed into Pakistan through the Khyber Pass. A French national, Abdur Rehman, had been taken to a hospital in Peshawar for treatment of injuries sustained in U.S. strikes on the eastern Khost border area of Afghanistan. A local journalist who met him quoted him as saying that 80 to 100 French militants were trapped in Afghanistan.
An Afghan commander, Mr. Adji Moussa, said his men had captured between six and eight new caves from the Al-Qaeda forces and found heavy weapons, ammunition and more video cassettes, but no sign of Osama.
According to a spokesman for the Afghan commander, Mr. Haji Zahir, a ``special push'' was made overnight while some Northern Alliance sources said the Al-Qaeda was split internally, with Chechens among them wanting to keep fighting. The hundreds of fighters who are under siege in the caves for the past two weeks are mainly Arabs and Chechens.
There was no sign of a promised surrender by 300 Al-Qaeda fighters in the Tora Bora area as they failed to give themselves up even four hours after the set time. A local militia commander, Mr. Mohammad Palawan, had earlier said that the 300 had promised to give themselves up.
Meanwhile, U.S. Marines moved into Kandahar to take control of the airport that was once the Taliban's political and spiritual base.
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