Afghan militia forces claimed to have made significant gains against Osama bin Laden's embattled forces in the Tora Bora region of the country Monday, as Northern Alliance officials reported they had captured two senior Taliban commanders, said sources. Authorities, on red alert against infiltration from Afghanistan by members of Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network, said on Monday they had arrested 20 foreigners, mostly Arabs, trying to slip across the border.
Five of those arrested were suffering injuries, inflicted either in fighting in southern Afghanistan’s Kandahar province or in US bombing raids of the area, an interior ministry official said. The arrests were made over the past three days in the Chaman border area, the official said. It appeared the foreigners had fled Kandahar.
Among those arrested at the weekend, the official said, were two Turks and four Macedonians. All were being interrogated by a joint team of security and intelligence agencies "to determine whether they were linked to the al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden," the official said.
Bin Laden is thought to be holed up with hundreds of his al-Qaeda supporters in caves at Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan, which is currently being blitzed and blasted by US warplanes and cannon-firing Afghan militia.
In a bid to cut off any escape routes, Pakistan has deployed troops on the border and has introduced extensive air and ground surveillance in Parachinar and Kurram agency areas, near the Tora Bora range. "There has been no attempt at infiltration so far into our areas from Tora Bora," an official said. |
