ISLAMABAD, 8 March 2003 — Pakistani and American forces have intensified the search for Osama Bin Laden along a southwestern stretch of the border with Afghanistan, and carried out raids this week based on information from a newly captured Al-Qaeda deputy, Pakistani intelligence and military officials say.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, thought to be the No. 3 figure in the terror network, told interrogators he met Bin Laden just weeks ago in a rendezvous set up through a network of phone calls and intermediaries, an intelligence official said Thursday on condition of anonymity.

At least two raids have been carried out in Pakistan’s southwestern Baluchistan region based on information from Mohammed since his capture last weekend, another Pakistani intelligence official said, also speaking on condition of anonymity. There were no major arrests from the raids, the official said.

Baluchistan’s Home Minister Sardar Sanaullah Zehri said late yesterday two sons of Bin Laden were wounded and possibly arrested in an operation near the southeast Afghan town of Ribat which killed at least nine suspected Al-Qaeda members.

He said the operation on Thursday involved US and Afghan troops and Pakistani border forces.

Washington and Islamabad swiftly quashed the provincial minister’s claims.

“There is absolutely no truth in this report. There has been no arrest of this nature,” Pakistani Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat said. A US official said in Washington: “It’s not true.”

“We have absolutely no information to substantiate that,” he said on condition of anonymity.

The authorities have been attempting to seal Pakistan’s porous border with Afghanistan to prevent fleeing Al-Qaeda operatives, as well as former Taleban, from crossing.

“Paramilitary troops in the border areas of Baluchistan and the North West Frontier Province were put on alert soon after the arrest of Khalid Sheikh in an effort to prevent his men returning to Afghanistan, or to prevent others from crossing into Pakistan,” a senior intelligence official told the Associated Press.

Another security official in Islamabad said Americans were using sophisticated communication equipment to monitor border areas in Baluchistan and the North West Frontier Province. Telephone numbers taken from Mohammed’s mobile phone are being tracked. The phone contained numbers inside and outside Pakistan, a government official said.

“The people he contacted in Pakistan have naturally been put under surveillance and we suspect the American agencies are doing the same,” he said.

Since Mohammed’s arrest, joint Pakistani and US forces have been searching for Bin Laden and his son, Saad, along the 560-kilometer stretch of border from the Baluchistan town of Chaman to the Iranian border, a Pakistan military source said.

Since the weekend, residents in Chaman said US aircraft swarmed overhead, dropping Pashtu-language leaflets on both sides of the border reminding them of the $25 million reward for Bin Laden.

US special forces and Pakistani soldiers are also farther north along the border, trying to flush out Taleban and Al-Qaeda fugitives in South Waziristan, in the North West Frontier Province. Mohammed’s meeting with Bin Laden took place somewhere in Baluchistan or farther north along the border, a Pakistani intelligence official said.

The official was one of a team of Pakistani and CIA agents who interrogated Mohammed for hours after he was nabbed in a predawn raid in Rawalpindi on Saturday.

Mohammed told his interrogators he did not know Bin Laden’s exact whereabouts, but that he was in the remote border region.

On Monday, the AP received similar information about Bin Laden’s supposed location from a former intelligence chief of the ousted Taleban regime. In a telephone interview from Afghanistan’s southern city of Kandahar, the former Taleban official said Bin Laden had been seen less than two months ago meeting with Taleban members in South Waziristan.

Several sources say Bin Laden moves with only a few guards, changing locations nightly and never using satellite telephones that could be used to pinpoint his location.

Instead, he reportedly sends messages through intermediaries, according to another former Taleban official.