ISLAMABAD, 14 November 2004 — Al-Qaeda-linked militants are on the run as Pakistani forces are driving them out of mountains near the Afghan border. However, attacks such as a bomb that wounded soldiers yesterday could not be ruled out, a commander said.

Three or four soldiers were wounded when their vehicle was hit by a blast in the market of Wana town but the military said the militants were losing their hide-outs in the area and were on the run.

“We have busted their main bases in the agency ... We have broken their myth,” field commander Maj. Gen. Niaz Khattak told reporters, referring to the South Waziristan region, of which Wana is capital.

“Three-fourths of the area is now under our control,” Khattak said. “We have made substantial, spacious gains in South Waziristan.”

Pakistani troops have been battling several hundred Al-Qaeda-linked militants, both foreigners and their Pakistani allies, in the mountains of South Waziristan since March.

However, the most wanted figure, Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden, remains elusive.

US officials say he and other senior Al- Qaeda figures could be hiding in Pakistan’s border lands but Pakistani officials disagree.

“So far I have no indication of Osama Bin Laden here. We have not even heard rumors about him,” Khattak said.

Pakistan says the foreigners in the border lands include Uzbeks, Chechens and Arabs. Khattak said of the 500 to 600 foreign militants in the area in March, only about 100 remained. They had up to 300 Pakistani allies, he said.

The militants were being forced to withdraw to remote hinterland away from Afghan border. The area would be cleared soon and the militants would not be allowed back, he said.

“As things stand today, it will not take very long. We should not take longer than the end of this year,” he said.

Up to 8,000 troops backed by helicopter gunships began a new offensive on Nov. 9 and up to 40 militants had been killed, Khattak said. He did not reveal government casualties.

Residents of Wana said one villager was killed yesterday, either by the blast in the market or when troops opened fire with rifles after the attack.

Khattak said such attacks could not be ruled out, despite the progress his men were making.

Pakistani forces attacked militant hide-outs on Friday, seizing bunkers and caves and some weapons, but they failed to catch one of their most wanted men.

Authorities have been trying to find Abdullah Mahsud, a Pakistani militant whose men kidnapped two Chinese engineers last month. One of the Chinese was killed in a rescue attempt, the other was freed.

Mahsud, who lost a leg to a land mine in the 1990s, is a former inmate of the US prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Pakistani military took reporters to Mahsud’s dusty home village of Nano and Khattak said the stocky, bushy-haired fighter was finding some support among conservative Muslim tribesmen.

The blast occurred when an apparently remote-controlled device blew up as a convoy of military vehicles passed by, damaging at least one truck and wounding four security personnel, witness Tariq Noor tsaid.

The explosion occurred at around 9.35 a.m. local time on a bypass road near the main bazaar of the regional administrative capital of Wana. The security personnel opened fire in response.

A student, Mohammed Javed, who was shopping at a nearby store, died, and two other men were injured, one of them dying later in hospital, Noor said.

— Additional input from agencies