Sunday December 16, 8:22 PM
Bin Laden no longer in Tora Bora: senior commander
Terror suspect Osama bin Laden is no longer in the region of Tora Bora mountain in eastern Afghanistan, senior Afghan commander Haji Mohammad Zaman revealed.
The mountains south of the city of Jalalabad have been the focus of the US-led hunt for bin Laden since the start of December, but provincial military chief Zaman said he had managed to escape.
"He is not there," Zaman told reporters after a day of heavy fighting here, in which the commander said bin Laden's al-Qaeda fighters had been cleaned out of the eastern province of Nangarhar.
Zaman, the military chief for Nangarhar province, told reporters: "We cleared al-Qaeda from our land. We did the job."
He revealed that some 200 al-Qaeda fighters loyal to Osama bin Laden have been killed and 25 captured in the region around Tora Bora mountain in eastern Afghanistan.
"We killed about 200 people from the al-Qaeda group and we captured about 25 persons from al-Qaeda," he said Sunday.
Sunday December 16, 8:50 PM
Bin Laden, al-Qaeda have fled mountain stronghold: Afghan militia
An Afghan militia leader declared victory over Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda fighters in the battle for their last known stronghold in Afghanistan.
But Haji Mohammad Zaman, the military head of the province in eastern Afghanistan which includes Tora Bora mountain, said bin Laden had also fled the region.
Zaman said al-Qaeda had been beaten as US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld carried out a landmark visit to an air base near Kabul for talks with Afghanistan's interim leader.
Zaman told reporters: "We cleared al-Qaeda from our land. We did the job."
He said the bodies of 200 al-Qaeda fighters had been discovered and 25 captured but gave no details on where the other bin Laden followers had gone.
According to Zaman, bin Laden had also disappeared. "He is not here," the commander declared. He did not say where the alleged terror mastermind may be.
The mountains, south of the city of Jalalabad and near the Pakistani border, have been the focus of the US-led hunt for bin Laden since the start of December.
There have been increasingly intensive US bombing raids on the caves and mountains over the past two weeks as Zaman's forces have advanced into the hills.
Earlier Sunday US warplanes, including B-52s, intensified the punishing bombing raids as Afghan forces entered the caves and tunnels.
Heavy machine-gun and rifle fire, mortars and grenade launchers were heard on several peaks.
Haji Musa, a deputy to Hazrat Ali -- another top local commander battling al-Qaeda -- said it was believed most of the fighters had fled toward the Pakistan border.
Rumsfeld said before arriving at Bagram air base north of Kabul that US special forces had also started to enter the caves in the hunt for bin Laden, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
But there was no sign of the al-Qaeda leader, despite US newspaper reports that he had been heard directing troops by short-wave radio in Tora Bora.
Rumsfeld said hundreds of bombs had been dropped on the White Mountain range which includes Tora Bora.
US bombers also detonated an underground cache of ordnance setting off a huge two-kilometre-wide (1.2 mile) explosion, he said.
Rumsfeld visited US troops at the air base and talked with top members of leaders of the interim administration -- including its leader Hamid Karzai and defence minister, Mohammad Qasim Fahim -- that will take office on December 22.
Rumsfeld said he had emphasised to Karzai that the US military presence in Afghanistan was not to take land. "We had no interest in territory. We were simply here for the sole purpose of finding the terrorists and stopping them from terrorizing," he said.
The defense secretary was the most senior US official to visit Afghanistan since before the 1979-89 Soviet occupation of the country.
The United States launched air strikes on Afghanistan on October 7 in a bid to flush out bin Laden and his Taliban backers.