KABUL/JEDDAH, 16 December — Afghan fighters whittled away at Osama Bin Laden’s dwindling guerrilla force yesterday, capturing 50 and killing 20, but failed to find the most wanted man as US Marines prepared a prison camp at Kandahar airport for up to 300 Al-Qaeda fighters who they presume might surrender or may be captured.
Meanwhile, more information poured in about the sheikh who appeared with Bin Laden in the videotape. Sheikh Ali ibn Said Al-Ghamdi who is also known as Abu Sulaiman Al-Makki was in Saudi Arabia in November. A source told Arab News that Al-Makki was in Qassim last month and later left for Afghanistan with his nine-year-old son ignoring an advice from a leading scholar not to go.
The name of one person mentioned in the video as Sualeh Al-Shoebi is actually Al-Shaqeeq. He also hails from Qassim and is in his 30s. Al-Shaqeeq is famous for interpretation of dreams. He had warned of a catastrophic attack on US while interpreting a dream. Another person mentioned in the tape, Al-Alwan is a self-taught preacher with sound knowledge of Hadith.
In Tora Bora, US warplanes dropped more bombs on the cave and tunnel hide-outs of Al-Qaeda as US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Afghan and US troops had made a major advance against the besieged fighters.
Both Rumsfeld and Afghan commanders said about 50 Al-Qaeda fighters had surrendered in the thrust by Afghan forces and a small numbers of US special forces, who were now helping to clear the ground.
Muhammad Pahlawan, a commander returning from the front line in the rugged White Mountains, told Reuters that 20 Al-Qaeda fighters had been killed, all Chechens.
Afghan militia leaders said they had found the bodies of 33 Al-Qaeda fighters. US troops said to have picked the voice of Bin Laden giving instructions to his Al-Qaeda men on a wireless in the White Mountains.
Meanwhile, a Saudi trader, Abdul Karim Al-Mahari is still detained in a jail in Kandahar. Al-Mahari was accused by Taleban of spying for US.
In Tampa, Florida, Gen. Tommy Franks said the Al-Qaeda combatants were running short of ammunition, food and water.
US warplanes launched some of their most intensive bombing raids yet on Al-Qaeda’s mountain lairs early yesterday. “A special push has been made overnight,” said Haji Atiqullah, a spokesman for commander Haji Zahir.
US commanders say estimates of the number of Al-Qaeda fighters trapped in the Tora Bora area range from 300 to 1,000.
US forces, who swept in to secure Kandahar airport on Friday for use by military and aid aircraft, reopened it to flights yesterday after a brief scare when intelligence spotted a nearby anti-aircraft missile.
But another threat lingered in the city itself. Armed Arab fighters, said to be Saudis, were in a hospital, threatening to blow themselves up if anyone tried to capture them.
Doctors in the Mirwais hospital said they were afraid the fighters — admitted to the hospital about two weeks ago while the city was still in Taliban hands — could cause huge damage. “The injured Arab fighters possess hand grenades and other small weapons,” surgeon Daud Farhad told Reuters.
In northern Afghanistan, the US-backed Northern Alliance said yesterday that with the help of US air power it had put down a revolt by local forces scrambling for control of the strategic town of Pul-e-Khumri after the Taleban left.
In Islamabad, authorities yesterday arrested 31 Arabs, the largest known group yet to escape from the embattled suspected hide-out of Bin Laden in Tora Bora.
Four others, including a wounded French national, were captured a day earlier.
The 31 men — all Yemenis — were arrested by border forces in the late afternoon as they crossed into the Kurram tribal area from the nearby Tora Bora hills, a senior Pakistani official told Reuters in Peshawar.
None of the 31 was carrying arms and none had been wounded in the intense US airstrikes on the rugged Tora Bora area and in ground assaults by anti-Taleban fighters, said the official, who did not want to be identified.
“They are all young men, and only one of them is suffering from a cold,” he said.
“The all ran away from Tora Bora area and have been put in a prison in Parachinar,” he said referring to a town in the Kurram area.
In Brussels, European Union leaders agreed to take part in a UN peacekeeping force once the US-led military action ended.
