AFP

Wednesday December 5, 5:37 AM

Bin Laden's aide killed, another wounded as al-Qaeda under attack

Around 1,000 Afghan militia engaged in a firefight in an eastern Afghanistan mountain lair with supporters of Osama bin Laden after US warplanes killed his financial manager and wounded -- possibly killed -- his right-hand man, security officials said.

There was no immediate report of casualties in the firefight, which came as US warplanes continued to pound the Tora Bora complex where local military commander Haji Mohammad Zaman claimed Tuesday bin Laden was holed up.

US jets also continued round the clock bombing of targets near Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban militia Tuesday appeared to have pushed back tribal forces seeking to dislodge them from their last citadel.

Jalalabad police chief Hazrat Ali said the Afghan militia had gone to Tora Bora, in the jagged snow-capped White Mountains about 50 kilometres (30 miles) south of the city, in a bid to encircle hundreds of members of bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network hiding in a remote tunnel and cave complex.

"At one point we had a small clash, there was firing," Hazrat Ali said. "But they escaped and left the area."

Hazrat Ali said Tuesday's exercise was a "common operation" with Zaman's forces.

Zaman had earlier told journalists that bin Laden's top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, an Egyptian, was wounded in a US air raid in the area on Monday and his treasurer, Ali Mahmud, was killed.

Many consider Zawahri, a doctor who founded the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, to be the real brains behind al-Qaeda, whose military commander Mohammad Atef was killed in an air strike near Kabul last month.

Along with bin Laden, Zawahri and Atef were considered the architects of the September 11 terror attacks that killed more than 3,500 people in New York and Washington and sparked the US-led Afghan campaign.

"I am not sure whether (Zawahri) is injured or he died," said Zaman, who added that Mahmud was killed by a US bomb in the village of Wouchnow.

"Yesterday, when they bombed, they killed 18 persons ... (including) the financial manager of Osama, the one who was responsible for the money," Zaman said.

The Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) said Tuesday, meanwhile, that tribal elder chiefs and Islamic scholars in Afghanistan's eastern Nangarhar province have called on the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to help prevent the slaughter of bin Laden's supporters holed up in the mountains.

It said that more than 300 chiefs and scholars held a meeting to discuss the matter, and resolved to call on the OIC to intervene as they did not want the Arabs, who also include women and children, to be killed in their area.

Despite the backing of the aerial bombardments, opposition forces were stalled Tuesday in their advance on the Kandahar airport by a heavy Taliban counter-attack, sources said.

"We pulled our boys out on the advice of the Americans as they were bombing Taliban who were so close to us," the source, who is close to former Kandahar governor Gul Agha, told AFP.

"Their bombing could have injured our fighters."

The troops retreated to Uruzgan bridge, about two kilometers (1.2 miles) from the airport, the source added.

Another source had earlier said that the bid to take the airport had been stalled after heavy fighting Monday and the anti-Taliban forces had decided to cement their existing positions. No fighting between opposition forces and Taliban troops had taken place Tuesday, he added.

Refugees continued to flee the bombing in the province, with up to 3,000 stuck in no-man's land between the Afghan-Pakistan border, according to the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) which struggled to register the newcomers for temporary staging camps. Many were without food or shelter.

A spokesman for the US-led coalition against terrorism, Kenton Keith, described the situation around Kandahar as extremely unpredictable and confused.

"To say that it is fluid is to perhaps give too great a sense of cohesion. The situation is changing as we speak," he told a news conference in Islamabad.

US Marines have set up a base south of Kandahar but have not joined in the fighting. Officials said Tuesday that 30 Australian Special Air Services troops had joined them and another 120 were on their way.

Marine officers said Tuesday that elite reconnaissance patrols armed with anti-tank weaponry are moving farther afield in the desert looking for potential targets.

Comprised of seasoned men with a decade or more in the Marines, the platoons typically go on patrol for days at a time, traveling in packs in off road vehicles and carrying M-4 carbine rifles equipped with silencers, the officers said.

-- Anonymous, December 04, 2001