KABUL, 30 August 2005 — The US military and NATO peacekeeping forces yesterday dismissed reports carried on Islamic websites that Osama Bin Laden had been injured in western Afghanistan. US spokesman Col. James Yonts said that his military had checked claims that the Al-Qaeda leader had been wounded by Spanish troops based in the western province of Herat.
“When we looked into that report — you know any allegation such as this, we take it very seriously — we found no proof,” Yonts told reporters in Kabul. The claim first surfaced on August 24 in a story on Italian news website Adnkronos International. It quoted two messages carried by “various Islamic websites,” the first of which said Bin Laden had been wounded in a clash with the Spaniards while the second gave details including that the injury was to his left leg.
In May, Islamic websites were used to give the news that Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, Al-Qaeda’s point man in Iraq, had been wounded. An audio message confirming the injury was later attributed to Zarqawi himself. The NATO-led peacekeeping force in Afghanistan, which has hundreds of Spanish troops based in Herat, also ruled out that any of its troops had injured Bin Laden, who has a $50 million bounty on his head.
“I’m afraid that was just a rumor. No truth in it,” NATO spokesman in Kabul Major Andy Elmes said. A Spanish helicopter crashed near Herat on Aug. 16, killing all 17 Spanish peacekeepers aboard. Madrid has said there were no signs of an attack. Bin Laden, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, has evaded capture for almost four years since US-led forces invaded Afghanistan to hunt him down and topple his backers, the Taleban regime.
US-led coalition and Afghan forces have killed a suspected Taleban commander responsible for numerous rocket attacks, ambushes and other guerrilla-style assaults in southern Afghanistan, Yonts said. Payenda Mohammed, who was thought to have led about 150 rebels, was killed along with three other militants in a fierce battle in Kandahar province Wednesday, he said. Some 15 other insurgents were wounded.
An assessment of the number of militants killed was continuing. During the battle, A-10 warplanes and attack helicopters were called in to bomb caves along a ridge where the militants had sought shelter. After the fighting, vehicles and weapons were found stashed in the caves, Yonts said. No Afghan or coalition troops were wounded in the fighting, he said.
