WASHINGTON/KABUL, 30 January — Up to 1,200 Al-Qaeda fighters are regrouping in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, a local commander said yesterday, as the US military prepared to expand its anti-terror campaign to Southeast Asia. In Washington, the Pentagon said it could not confirm the reported Al-Qaeda activity, but warned that the network led by top terror suspect Osama Bin Laden was still a threat. “The war is absolutely not over,” said Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. David Lapan.

A controversial joint operation with US troops against Muslim fighters in the Philippines was set to begin on Thursday, officials said, opening a new front in the US war on terror. In Afghanistan, local military chief Padsha Khan, incoming governor of Paktia province and a powerful Mujahedeen commander, said hundreds of Al-Qaeda operatives have gathered in mountains near the village of Zurmat.

Padsha told AFP he was readying some 6,000 fighters to root them out of the area south of the Tora Bora mountains, where US warplanes and ground forces waged an intense campaign against Al-Qaeda cave positions in December. “We are not sure of how many there are or of their exact location,” Padsha said at his headquarters in Tumoni, about 30 kilometers west of the main provincial city of Gardez.

At the Pentagon, Lapan said the United States was monitoring pockets of Al-Qaeda and Taleban resistance, and would act against them when it received solid information. But as US troops continued to hunt for remnants of Afghanistan’s former ruling regime, US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage declared that the Taleban no longer controlled any territory in the region.

Washington suffered the third crash of a US aircraft this month late Monday when a CH-47 Chinook helicopter went down in a “hard landing” near the eastern city of Khost, injuring 14 soldiers.

The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press said the crash took place about one kilometer east of Khost airport. The US Central Command said four of the troops suffered serious but not life-threatening injuries, adding that all were taken to an area hospital for medical treatment.

Afghan leader Hamid Karzai pledged to back the anti-terror campaign to the “absolute end”. Karzai, on a historic visit to Washington for talks with US President George W. Bush, said Monday the Afghan people would share the burden of the relatives of the more than 3,000 that died on Sept. 11.

Refugees were also fleeing to Pakistan to escape “persecution” by Northern Alliance forces, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said. Thousands of Afghans have crossed into Pakistan in the past few days, complaining of persecution by Northern Alliance fighters, UNHCR said. “These people are predominantly ethnic Pashtuns and they say that the reason why they’re fleeing is persecution by various Northern Alliance groups and forces,” UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski said in Geneva.