KABUL, 29 January 2004 — The US-led coalition in Afghanistan is confident of capturing Al-Qaeda terror network chief Osama Bin Laden, who has long eluded determined efforts to catch him, by the end of the year, a US military spokesman said yesterday.
Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty said that the hunt for militant remnants of the ousted Islamic fundamentalist Taleban regime including its leader Mulla Omar, Bin Laden and former Afghan premier and warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was continuing.
“Osama Bin Laden, Mulla Omar and Hekmatyar represent a threat to the world and they need to be destroyed. We believe we will catch them within this year,” Hilferty told reporters in Kabul.
Southern and southeastern Afghanistan have been hard hit by an apparent resurgence of the Taleban more than two years after US-led forces launched operations to topple the hard-line militia.
A 12,000-strong US-led international coalition is hunting militant remnants of the ousted Taleban regime and their Al-Qaeda allies, thought to be re-grouping along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.
