ISLAMABAD, 21 March 2004 — About a dozen US intelligence officials are helping Pakistan in a fresh offensive against up to 400 Al-Qaeda fighters beseiged in a rugged tribal region bordering Afghanistan, the military said.
No US soldiers are involved in the operation but a group of around a dozen US officials are providing technical assistance on intelligence, Pakistan military spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan told reporters at a briefing Friday.
Pakistani forces have cornered up to 400 heavily armed Al-Qaeda fighters believed to be protecting a “high value target” in the remote tribal area officials have said as speculation mounted a top Al-Qaeda leader, possibly Osama Bin Laden’s deputy Ayman Al-Zawahiri, was among them.
“Three hundred to 400 militants may be holed up in that area,” Sultan said.
“We assume that there could possibly be a high value target but we do not know who it could be.”
Sultan said that eight “terrorists” including five foreigners had been apprehended, but stressed there was “no specific intelligence” relating to Zawahiri’s presence.
Thousands of army and paramilitary troops have thrown a 50 square kilometer (20 square mile) cordon around the fighters in a group of villages in South Waziristan tribal district, 20 kilometers from the Afghan border, national television reported yesterday.
“At least two terrorists” were killed, Sultan said, one of them when a group of 10 tried to break through the cordon.
The suspected senior Al-Qaeda member whom the Pakistani Army thought it had surrounded is probably a Chechen or Uzbek militant leader, a Pakistani commander said yesterday.
Intercepted rebel radio communications suggested the mystery militant leader was an Uzbek or a Chechen. Zawahiri is Egyptian.
“He is most probably a Chechen or Uzbek because all the intercepts we have been receiving have been in the Chechen or Uzbek language,” Lt. Gen. Safder Hussain told reporters visiting the western town of Wana, near the fighting.
Hussain said speculation that Zawahiri had been with the militants was “conjecture”. Zawahiri, a doctor, is regarded as the brains of Al-Qaeda. He is thought to be one of the key figures behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
The capture of one of the world’s most wanted men would be a major coup for the United States, under fire over its rationale for the war in Iraq. Yesterday was the first anniversary of the start of that conflict.
Hussain, the top military commander in the region, did not say who the Chechen or Uzbek militant leader might be.
An intelligence source said earlier two Chechen militants, identified as Danyar and Quaran Ata, were believed to be in the area and there was a possibility a prominent Uzbek militant, Tahir Yaldashev, was with them.
The offensive, involving several thousand soldiers, is the biggest Pakistan has waged since it joined the US-led war on terror.
