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US-Italian commandos intensify hunt for Osama Press Trust of India Islamabad, March 13 Intensifying their search operation, US and Italian Crack Commandos have launched an all-out hunt for Osama bin Laden and Taliban supremo Mulla Muhammad Omar along the Pak-Afghan borders. "The commandos have been specially selected for their features that match the Pashtuns of the area and have familiarised themselves to the terrain and native milieu," media reports here quoted officials as saying. "They (commandos) have launched a systematic hunt to capture bin Laden, Omar and (Afgan rebel leader Gulbuddin) Hekmatyar dead or alive," they said. The officials claimed...

Breaking News - 03/12/2003 Radio Stations in IRAN have reported the Capture of Osama Bin Laden in PAKISTAN. The CIA is however saying that there is no truth to these reports. Further information will be posted as it becomes available... Following is the article/email: (AFX-Focus) 2003-03-12 13:35 GMT: Osama bin Laden captured in Pakistan - BBC monitoring Iran radio UPDATE (Updating with earlier report from Pakistan Tribune) LONDON (AFX) - Osama bin Laden has been captured in Pakistan, according to a report picked up from Iranian radio by the BBC's global monitoring service. No further details were currently available. Earlier,...

Pakistani People’s Alliance With Bin Laden Hampers Capture Q U E T T A, Pakistan, March 12 — A major operation is still under way in southwestern Pakistan as American and Pakistani officials search for Osama bin Laden, but after seeming so close last week, the hunt now looks less promising and the United States is trying a new tactic: bounty hunters. All along Pakistan's fractious border with Afghanistan, the United States has been trying to recruit bounty hunters, and has been dropping leaflets to make sure everyone knows there is a $25 million price on bin Laden's head. There...

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan denied on Wednesday that al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden the alleged mastermind behind the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, had been arrested in Pakistan. Pakistan's interior minister described as baseless and unfounded the report by an official of a small Pakistani political party. Officials in Washington said they had no information to back up the report. "This is absolutely unfounded and absolutely baseless," Pakistan's Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat told Reuters. Other senior Pakistan officials also denied the report. A U.S. administration spokesman in Washington said: "We have no information to substantiate...

Greta just announced that bin Laden's location has now been narrowed to a 25 mile radius.

Elusive ... Osama bin Laden. Pakistan has hinted that it is closing in on Osama bin Laden, with its ambassador to the United States saying "some bigger fish" may be captured soon. Speaking at an anti-terrorism forum in Washington on the recent arrest of al-Qaeda's right-hand man, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi said: "There is reason to believe that hopefully in the future we might even have some bigger fish captured and we will get on top of this problem of terrorism as such." Mr Qazi's comments were unusually frank and follow statements by Pakistani intelligence officials that...

March 11, 2003 Pakistan Reports on Leads From Qaeda Aide's ArrestBy ERIK ECKHOLM SLAMABAD, Pakistan, March 10 — Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the lieutenant of Al Qaeda captured in Pakistan nine days ago, told interrogators that he met with Osama bin Laden in December but refused to describe the location, Pakistan's top intelligence officials said tonight in the first detailed, official account of the arrest and questioning of Mr. Mohammed. "He confirmed he met him in December," one official said. "But I don't believe him unless he tells us the location and gives us witnesses." Other Pakistani security officials have said...

Pakistani agents 'just hours from bin Laden' By Alex Spillius in Islamabad (Filed: 11/03/2003) Pakistan's intelligence services claimed yesterday that agents were "just hours" behind Osama bin Laden thanks to information gleaned from the arrest last week of al-Qa'eda's number three. "From our intelligence gathering we feel that he [bin Laden] is alive. We appear to be just hours behind him," a senior Pakistani official said at a briefing following the arrest last week of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - the chief planner of the September 11 attacks - and other suspects including a Saudi Arabian, Ahmed al-Hawsawi,...

PAKISTAN’S military intelligence agency claimed yesterday that it was closer to capturing Osama bin Laden as a result of information obtained from Sheikh Khalid Mohammed and two other senior al-Qaeda leaders arrested this month. In an unprecedented briefing to foreign journalists, the secretive Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) also showed a videotape of the pre-dawn raid on March 1 that netted Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, and Mustafa Ahmed Hawsawi, the alleged financier of the attacks. They also showed clips from a separate video of Mohammed’s interrogation. A senior ISI officer said Mohammed...

Bin Laden 'alive and well' in mountains By Phil Reeves, Asia Correspondent 07 March 2003 Pakistani intelligence officials claimed yesterday that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an alleged leader of al-Qa'ida who was captured last week, told his interrogators that Osama bin Laden was alive and well, and hiding in mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The captive, who is accused of masterminding the 11 September atrocities and is now under relentless questioning by US intelligence agents at a secret location, has said that he met Bin Laden recently, a Pakistani intelligence official told Associated Press. The official, who claims to have participated...

Bin Laden 'spotted in Afghan mountains' By Andrew Buncombe in Kuwait City and Rupert Cornwell in Washington 10 March 2003 Al-Qa'ida's leader, Osama bin Laden, was seen in southern Afghanistan days before US forces launched an operation to find him and members of his network, a former Taliban diplomat claimed yesterday.Amid continuing confusion over reports that two of Bin Laden's sons had been caught after a shootout with Pakistani forces last week, the former Taliban official said the boys' father had been in the same region. Naseer Ahmed Roohi said he had information from "reliable sources" that Bin Laden...

Al Qaeda's No. 3 is being probed for clues in Afghanistan, says an intelligence official.By Owais Tohid, Special to The Christian Science MonitorISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN - A quiet but urgent manhunt is under way - stretching from the arid deserts on the borders of Afghanistan near Pakistan's southwestern Balochistan province, to the forbidding mountains in the country's north - for the world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden. Forces in Pakistan and Afghanistan are following clues provided by Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, who was arrested March 1. At least they say they are following...

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A top Osama bin Laden aide arrested this month has given information helping investigators close in on the al Qaeda leader and told them he met bin Laden in December, Pakistan's intelligence agency said. The powerful military Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) said on Monday Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's arrest in the city of Rawalpindi on March 1 indicated the hunt for the world's most wanted man was moving forward. An intelligence source said another al Qaeda suspect who had been arrested in the northwestern city of Peshawar as part of sweeps since Saturday was believed to have had contact...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan has arrested 10 men in the northwest city of Peshawar for suspected al Qaeda links and an intelligence source said on Monday one was believed to have had contact with Osama bin Laden. The source said the man, identified only as Masood and reported to be either an Afghan or an Egyptian, had received a telephone call that was traced by a team monitoring satellite and mobile phone conversations of suspected terrorists. Monitored calls had included conversations with senior members of bin Laden's al Qaeda network, said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistani intelligence officials confirmed Monday that a top al-Qaida suspect captured earlier this month met Osama bin Laden in December and has produced information that has helped authorities close in on the terrorist mastermind. The March 1 arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, thought to be the No. 3 figure in the terror network, as well as information from other suspected terrorists has brought authorities "significantly closer to Osama," an intelligence official said at a rare briefing.