Pakistani military pursues Al-Zawahri
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-03-20 14:47

Pakistani attack helicopters and artillery Saturday pounded hundreds of al-Qaida suspects and tribesmen hunkered down in mud fortresses in a border region, where al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri is believed hiding.

An unidentified tribesman comforts children Villagers Haseena, 10, left, and her sister Asmeena, 2, hurt by shells during a battle between the Pakistan army and suspected al-Qaida militants, at a local hospital in Wana, South Waziristan, Pakistan, on Friday, March 19, 2004. The Pakistani army is using heavy artillery and helicopters to take control of terrorists hiding along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. [AP Photo]

Up to 400 militants are believed holed up in the heavily fortified compounds in South Waziristan — a forbidding tribal region near Afghanistan.

"The operation is on," army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said Saturday.

He reported no arrests of any senior al-Qaida member.

An Associated Press reporter in Wana, the main town of South Waziristan, said a helicopter gunship pounded Gangikhel village on the western outskirts of Wana Saturday morning, an indication that the operation may be expanding.

The village had not been targeted since the new offensive was launched Tuesday.

Fighting stopped in the evening on Friday but late into the night the troops began firing artillery guns, an intelligence official in Wana said on the condition of anonymity.

On Friday, Sultan said the Pakistani forces were joined by "a dozen or so" American intelligence agents in the ongoing operation.

U.S. satellites, Predator drones and other surveillance equipment hovered overhead.

Authorities hoped to wrap up the raid by Sunday afternoon, Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayyat told The Associated Press. Dozens have been killed in the four-day operation.

Across the Afghan border a few miles away, U.S. and Afghan forces tightened a net along the rugged frontier and reported arresting midlevel terrorist leaders in recent days.

Hundreds of civilians poured out of the battle zone in the tribal South Waziristan region, some wounded and others carrying their meager possessions — clothes, carpets, pots and pans. Many said they knew nothing about the militants in their midst, and expressed outrage at the army assault.

An estimated 300 to 400 militants — a mix of foreigners and Pakistani tribesmen — were facing off against the military in several villages including Kaloosha, Azam Warsak and Shin Warsak, according to Sultan.

Sultan said authorities' intelligence assessment was that a high-level fugitive was among the fighters but that he had not been seen and it was unclear whether it was al-Zawahri.

"The type of resistance, the type of preparation of their defensive positions, the hardened fortresses they have made means we can assume that there could probably be some high-value target there," Sultan said Friday from the army press office in Rawalpindi, a city near the capital, Islamabad.

He backed off claims by four senior Pakistani officials that captured militants had revealed that al-Zawahri was among them, and possibly wounded.

A TV grab taken September 28, 2003 shows Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's second-in-command. Pakistani troops have surrounded gunmen believed to be protecting al-Zawahiri. [AP Photo]

"So far, whatever people we have apprehended, we have not got confirmation from them," he said, but added that he could not share such intelligence anyway.

This semiautonomous region, which has resisted outside control for centuries, has long been considered a likely hiding place for the top two al-Qaida leaders — but there was no indication Osama bin Laden was with al-Zawahri, a 52-year-old Egyptian surgeon.

Under pressure from Washington, Pakistan has sent 70,000 troops into the region since the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, which were carried out by al-Qaida. This week's operation is by far the bloodiest.

The raid began Tuesday as a routine patrol and search for a couple of tribesmen accused of harboring foreign militants, but authorities rushed in reinforcements after paramilitary forces "barged into a hardened terrorists' den," Sultan said.

He accused the militants of using women and children as human shields in the mud buildings, preventing the troops from using artillery. But he acknowledged that the local "population is on the whole sympathetic" to the fighters.

In Karikot, a town a few miles from the heaviest fighting, elders convened an emergency jirga — or tribal council — and accused the army of breaking long-standing agreements for conduct in the region.

At the Rehman Medical Complex in Wana, the main town in South Waziristan, two sisters — Haseena, 10 and Asmeena, 2 — received first aid after being struck by shrapnel. The girls' 12-year-old brother, Din Mohammed, was killed when a shell landed near their house in the village of Kaga Panga.

"We were eating lunch and all of a sudden the shelling began and it hit our courtyard," Haseena said, her face bandaged. "I loved my brother a lot. What did we do to deserve this?"

Other civilians who fled to Wana — where there was no bloodshed — said they saw jet fighters and heard heavy gunfire through the night as fighting spread on Friday. Residents reported seeing scores of army trucks carrying troops and weapons from Wana to the target areas.

Villagers reported a lull in the fighting Friday afternoon as tribal elders tried to mediate an end to the combat.

Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said Thursday that a "high value" target was believed trapped, and four senior Pakistani officials told AP that intelligence indicated it was al-Zawahri.

President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, told CNN on Friday that a "fierce battle was raging" but the United States did not have any independent confirmation that al-Zawahri was surrounded.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld concurred in a CNN interview. "It's not clear to me who's there, if anybody, but certainly there are an awful lot of fine Pakistani forces working hard."

U.S. and Afghan troops captured "semi-senior" terrorist leaders as they tightened security along the frontier, according to a spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Presidential spokesman Jawed Ludin said it was unclear if those detained had fled the battle in Pakistan, and declined to give any details of who might be in custody.

A Taliban spokesman, Abdul Samad, told AP by telephone that al-Zawahri and bin Laden were hiding in Afghanistan, far from the Pakistani assault.

"Muslims of the world — don't worry about them, these two guests, they are fine," he said.

Sultan said the Pakistani forces had surrounded an area of 20 square miles centered on Shin Warsak, using an inner and outer cordon of troops numbering a "couple of thousand." He said the military was "quite certain that nobody could have escaped."

He displayed pictures of two bloodied militants' bodies recovered by Pakistani forces on the first day of fighting. He said one was believed to be a Chechen, the other an Arab, but their identities would have to be confirmed in DNA tests.

Two militants were killed and eight were captured Friday, he said. Among those captured were five foreigners along with a large cache of weapons. At least 43 people — 17 soldiers and 26 suspected militants — were killed earlier this week in fighting in the area.

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