Pakistan forces may have al Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahri surrounded in a remote tribal region near the border with Afghanistan, a senior Pakistani government official said on Thursday. "A pitched battle is going on there. The way these people are resisting, we think there is someone important over there," the official told Reuters. "We think al-Zawahri may be holed up there," he said.
Earlier, President Pervez Musharraf said Pakistani troops believed they had surrounded a "high value target" during a battle with militants loyal to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. "(Judging by) the resistance that is being offered by the people there, we feel that there may be a high value target," Musharraf told CNN. Musharraf, who said he had spoken to a military commander, declined to speculate on the identity of the target. Asked if it could be bin Laden or Zawahri, Musharraf said: "I am not going to say that because my previous experience is that whatever I say, headlines come that ’he says Zawahri is there, or Osama’. I can’t. It would just be a guess. But I think that very likely there is a high value target. Who I don’t know."
Pakistani forces launched a fresh offensive on Thursday against suspected al Qaeda fighters and their Pakistani tribesmen allies near the Afghan border. Fighting went on through the day and the sound of shelling in the South Waziristan region could be heard late into the evening. Sixteen soldiers and 24 suspected militants were killed in fighting in the same area on Tuesday. The dead suspected militants included men believed to be foreigners loyal to bin Laden, officials said. |