PESHAWAR/ROME, 20 December — Dozens of captured Al-Qaeda fighters made a daring escape yesterday, overpowering their guards and triggering a shootout that left 14 militants and Pakistani security force personnel dead.
Seven Arabs belonging to Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network and seven security force personnel were killed in the gunbattle near Sadda, a town in the Kurram semi-autonomous tribal zone of northwest Pakistan, officials said.
Officials said 156 prisoners were being transferred in three buses and two trucks to a prison in the northern city of Kohat when Al-Qaeda men in one vehicle overpowered their warders, seized their weapons and tried to hijack the bus.
"In the ensuing melee the bus carrying 48 Al-Qaeda men careened off the winding road near Arawali village in Kurram Agency and fell 20 feet down," the government said in a statement.
The Al-Qaeda prisoners, detained after crossing into Pakistan to escape US and Afghan militia assaults on their mountain hide-outs in eastern Afghanistan, exchanged fire with the security forces and fled into the surrounding mountains and forests.
A Pakistan Army soldier was among the security forces killed, while six paramilitary troops were also injured, the government said, revising down an earlier toll.
A security cordon was thrown around the entire area and commandos were flown in by helicopter to hunt for the 20 Al-Qaeda men who escaped with three seized assault rifles. Officials in the area expressed optimism the militants would be recaptured soon saying "local tribes were not cooperating with the Arabs".
One wounded Arab, who officials said was a Saudi national, was admitted to a hospital in Alizai village. The authorities said they had also recovered US, British and Pakistani currency from the bodies of the Arabs who died in the battle.
Arab fighters who fled into a forest opened fire when troops chased them, officials said. Some of the fleeing Al-Qaeda men also tried, but failed, to snatch guns from local tribesmen, while one Arab man forced his way into a house in Alizai. When security forces stormed the house, he opened fire, but was killed in the retaliatory fire.
Bus driver Rehman Ali told reporters that when he left Parachinar around 10:30 a.m. (0530 GMT) the prisoners’ arms were not tied, "but the way the Arabs were staring at our security men made me suspicious that something might happen."
"After chanting Allah-o-Akbar (God is Great) they threw me and the conductor of the bus out of the vehicle.
"An Arab seized control of the vehicle. But after covering a short distance he lost control and the bus fell into a ditch and the prisoners escaped," he said.
Hundreds of Al-Qaeda militants are believed to have crossed into Pakistan after the fall of their hide-outs in Tora Bora.
US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday Pakistan has detained several hundred Al-Qaeda fighters who fled across the border from Afghanistan. According to a source, Al-Qaeda captives told their interrogators that Bin Laden had addressed them before he left Tora Bora some 15 days before the capture of the hide-outs.
In Yemen, authorities said, troops are chasing Al-Qaeda men who include an in- law of Bin Laden.
In another development, the Afghan interim government, scheduled to take power on Saturday, agreed yesterday to a 3,000-strong UN force for a six-month period, but stressed that foreign troops will not be in charge of security.
In London, Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon said the force will consist of 3,000 to 5,000 troops and that Britain will lead it for a period of up to three months.
"The United Kingdom has been invited to take on lead nation status because we and others believe that our forces have the capability and experience required to undertake this operation," Hoon told parliament. Afghan Defense Minister Muhammad Qasim Fahim, who had previously wanted the force restricted to 1,000 troops, stressed that the peacekeepers would not run Afghanistan’s security affairs. "The people of Afghanistan liberated their country by themselves and international forces will come here mainly for the reconstruction of Afghanistan," he said.
Only 1,000 of the troops will be deployed for security, another third will concentrate on medical and logistic work and the remainder would be a reserve force, probably based at Bagram airport, 50 kilometers north of Kabul, he said.
The first 100 Royal Marines from Britain, who will lead the force, are expected in Kabul Saturday to assist in security for Karzai Cabinet’s inauguration, which several foreign ministers are expected to attend.
Hamid Karzai, chosen to lead the new Afghanistan government, promised in Rome yesterday to hand over Arabs caught in his country to face international justice.
"The Arabs in Afghanistan who have no criminal record are just citizens...but the ones who have committed international crimes, crimes against mankind, crimes against our people, they must face international justice," he told a news conference in Rome.
According to reports serious differences emerged among key European allies yesterday on the command structure of the foreign security force for Afghanistan.
Britain suggested linking its command structure with that of US troops waging war on Afghanistan’s Taleban and the Al-Qaeda network, but German Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping told reporters in Brussels, where he was attending a NATO meeting, there had to be a strict separation between the two missions.
And a senior German government source said Berlin might not take part unless it was satisfied with the command arrangements and rules of engagement. If Germany did not join, the Netherlands might also stay out, one source said.
With Osama bin Laden still on the run, eight FBI agents set about interrogating captured members of his Al-Qaeda network at a newly built detention center at Kandahar airport. In the same region, remnants of Afghanistan’s routed Taleban, Bin Laden’s protectors, attacked tribal fighters overnight at a town between Kandahar and Pakistan, reporters said.
A team of French journalists leaving Kandahar for Pakistan said they had been stopped by excited guards at a checkpoint before the town of Takhteh Pol.
"The guards said there was fighting all night because the Taleban attacked. They said to come back in a few hours because they had to check who was in control of the town," one of the reporters told Reuters.
Meanwhile, a number of Saudis, who had entered Iran in a bid to go to Afghanistan to join Taleban and Al-Qaeda fighters, are reportedly stranded there.
A source told Arab News the Saudis have been advised by a well-known scholar to contact the Saudi Embassy in Iran for help. The scholar told them they would be treated in a better way if they contacted their country’s embassy and returned to their homeland rather than seeking help from others or falling into the hands of the Americans.
The scholar had earlier advised Saudis against going to Afghanistan to join Taleban or Al-Qaeda. In a statement posted on the Internet, the scholar had advised young Saudis not to go to Afghanistan.
More information, meanwhile,º poured in about Khalid Al-Harbi, the disabled man who appeared in the videotape with Bin Laden. Arab News learned that Al-Harbi was married to a Kuwaiti woman and that his video with Bin Laden was shot by his son Sulaiman who had joined him in his trip to Afghanistan.
According to a source, Al-Harbi went to Afghanistan through Iran.
