TORA BORA/WASHINGTON, 15 December — The Osama Bin Laden video has evoked mixed reaction across the Muslim world.
In Egypt, while some questioned its authenticity, others considered it genuine. According to a lawyer of Al-Gamaa Al- Islamiya, Muntasar Al-Zayyad, the tape is genuine, but it doesn’t prove Al-Qaeda’s involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Officials in other Arab countries, who commented, accepted it as genuine but many ordinary people were skeptical and some groups denounced it as fake.
Arab News has learned that the sheikh who appeared on the video with Bin Laden was Abdul Aziz Al-Ghamdi, a Saudi, who used to preach in a small mosque south of Jeddah.
Al-Ghamdi was twice arrested by the Saudi authorities in connection with his activities. Al-Ghamdi mentioned in the tape the name of Salman Al-Alwan, who had issued a fatwa supporting Al-Qaeda and saying that those killed in attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were not innocent. Al-Alwan is a teacher in a school in Buraida and a scholar.
Meanwhile, Afghan fighters backed by US bombing closed in on the last hide-outs of Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda force yesterday as US President George W. Bush repeated he wanted Bin Laden "dead or alive" and called the latest videotape a "devastating declaration of guilt".
Tribal fighters, meanwhile, claimed to have seized a cave yesterday that a top Afghan commander said was recently occupied by Bin Laden.
Commander Hazrat Ali said his troops had also surrounded a large number of Al-Qaeda guerrillas on a mountain ridge. There were unconfirmed battlefield reports that Bin Laden might be among them, he said. Ali said the cave was one of several discovered after his tribesmen beat back Al-Qaeda forces amid heavy US aerial bombing in the Tora Bora area in eastern Afghanistan near Pakistan border.
"There are some caves and now the (alliance forces) are going to search these caves. We hope to catch Osama," Ali said.
However, new conflicting reports surfaced on whether or not Bin Laden himself was hemmed in with his supporters.
US officials said they believed Bin Laden was holed up with his supporters in the Tora Bora area. But the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) said he had gone. Quoting informed sources, the news agency said Bin Laden had traveled to Tora Bora, south of Jalalabad, after Kabul fell to Northern Alliance forces on Nov. 6.
He remained there until around Nov. 25 or 26, but then "disappeared from Tora Bora and left for some unknown place", AIP quoted its source as saying.
US warplanes unleashed more devastating bombing raids in an attempt to smoke out remaining Al-Qaeda gunmen from their mountain cave retreats in the Tora Bora region of eastern Afghanistan. But the guerrillas battled on. Afghan militiamen trying to flush them out said they had made advances. "In the morning at 9 a.m. we started to fight the Arabs," young soldier Akim Saidaqim told Reuters high up a mountain road.
"Since the morning we have pushed them from two mountains. It’s possible that they will surrender tomorrow." But front-line commander Haji Zahir said although Al-Qaeda members were being pushed back they showed no signs of giving up.
To the west, hundreds of heavily armed US Marines swept in to secure Kandahar airport in the heart of the power base of Bin Laden’s ousted Taleban protectors.
According to a Washington Post report, the US has deployed super-elite sniper and "snatch-and-grab" teams to the Tora Bora mountains in the hunt for Bin Laden.
At a European Union summit in Brussels yesterday, Belgium’s foreign minister said the EU had agreed to form a multinational peacekeeping force but other countries said it was not an EU force and would involve other states too. In Pakistan, security officials arrested 109 Pakistanis who fought with Afghanistan’s Taleban as they crossed the border yesterday.
