Pakistani troops battling suspected al-Qaeda fighters in Pakistan's lawless north on Monday discovered a mile-long tunnel running through the battlefield, through which senior al-Qaeda members may have escaped, officials said.
Several tunnels were discovered leading from a huddle of fiercely defended mud fortresses near Afghanistan's border, which have been besieged by a force of 7,000 Pakistani troops for almost a week. The tunnels were said to have led to a nearby dry riverbed running along the border.
Brigadier Mahmood Shah, security chief of Pakistan's northern tribal region, said the longest tunnel was more than a mile (1.6km) long, and could have been used as an escape route.
"There is a possibility that the tunnel may have been used at the start of the operation," he said.
Senior Pakistani officials have suggested that al-Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, could be among the hundreds of besieged fighters. Seeking to explain the ferocity of resistance, President Pervez Musharraf said last week that a "high-value" target was probably among them.
US intelligence operatives are assisting the Pakistani army in the battle, in which more than 40 suspected terrorists, soldiers and civilians have been killed.
A senior US commander, General John Abizaid, visited Islamabad on Monday, raising speculation that the Pakistani army could be on the verge of capturing a major al-Qaeda prize. But Western diplomats in Islamabad were sceptical. The mud fortresses would be too obvious a hiding place, they said.
"It's very hard to believe al-Zawahiri has been hiding in what amounts to a military camp," said one diplomat. "Or if he is there, it's impossible to believe that the Pakistani intelligence services didn't know about it a long time ago."
Army officials said on Monday they were testing the DNA of six suspected foreign fighters killed in the battle, while interrogating 123 captured fighters. Five of the bodies were exhibited to journalists at an army hospital in the northern city of Rawalpindi on Monday. The nationalities of the dead men were impossible to determine.
"For us, every foreigner who is caught or killed is important because we do not know who they are," army spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan said. "We took the decision to do DNA tests to confirm the identities of these people. I cannot say if any among them is al-Zawahiri."
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS