Bin Laden may be surrounded, U.S. officials say

By Robert Burns

Associated Press

WASHINGTON – Pentagon officials believe Osama bin Laden may be bottled up with al-Qaida forces under attack by U.S. commandos and tribal forces in a rugged canyon in Afghanistan, a senior defense official said today.

The United States has sent more special operations forces into the Tora Bora region, where they could engage in direct combat.

Intense bombing and advances by U.S. commandos and anti-Taliban rebels have reduced substantially the area in which bin Laden and his forces can operate safely within the cave-dotted mountains near Tora Bora, U.S. officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Al-Qaida forces are corralled in two parallel valleys, between high mountain peaks. Afghan opposition forces are blocking the north ends of both north-south valleys and advancing on the al-Qaida forces.

The southern ends of both valleys cross the border into Pakistan, where that country’s military has arrayed troops to block escape. The United States is watching the surrounding peaks around the clock to try to detect anyone escaping that way, one defense official said.

“If he’s there, he doesn’t have much room to maneuver,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other military officials have stressed they aren’t sure where bin Laden is, saying he could be elsewhere in Afghanistan, but believe he may be in the Tora Bora area.

That’s largely because of three factors. First, al-Qaida troops are fighting “like there’s something there worth fighting for,” the official said. Second, opposition fighters have reported spotting bin Laden in the area. Third, the military has other unspecified information suggesting Tora Bora is the best place to look.

Rumsfeld said there has been “something above a modest increase” in the number of special operations troops near Tora Bora.

The special operations forces are acting as spotters for U.S. planes strafing and bombing al-Qaida positions while Afghan tribal forces advance in the snowy canyons. Rumsfeld said U.S. troops are now doing more than acting as advisers to the Afghan forces, but he offered no details.

To effectively call in airstrikes against al-Qaida forces, the U.S. troops must position themselves close to the battlefront. Thus they could become engaged in direct combat, as some did earlier in the war during battles for control of the city of Mazar-e-Sharif.

Other U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the few dozen U.S. troops in the Tora Bora area are prepared to engage in direct combat if necessary and to take possession of senior al-Qaida leaders. These officials said it was not clear today whether the U.S. troops had engaged in direct combat in the Tora Bora region.

Rumsfeld said those troops would do “whatever needed to be done to get their hands on” al-Qaida fighters.

The defense secretary said some bin Laden loyalists in Afghanistan already have escaped to other countries to regroup and probably rearm.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that any number of al-Qaida have gone across various borders and do intend to fight another day, and we intend to find them,” Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news conference.

He offered no specifics. He said intelligence reports offer conflicting assessments of whether bin Laden himself has escaped into Pakistan or remains in Afghanistan’s mountainous east, where tribal forces aided by U.S. and British commandos are fighting pitched battles.

A few al-Qaida members are believed to have fled Afghanistan and arrived in Somalia. It is not known how they got there, or who was among them. The terror organization has cells and affiliates in the lawless country, including the group Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, which is thought to have been involved in the deaths of U.S. troops in Somalia in 1993.

The United States blames bin Laden and his al-Qaida network for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

In related developments: