[lonevoice]

It's very puzzling. The hard core jihadists they've got surrounded here are certainly not known to be type that would surrender. The fighting's already been going on for a few days. What would make them surrender now?

[MEG33]

I read that is their practice when it happened in Afghanistan.How else can one explain it!

[Peter J. Huss]

It could be a delay tatic because they need to pause before a final push and want to, at the same time, keep the ball in their court.

There could be a mix of hard core and regular soldiers, many of which may have lost their taste for battle after a few days of pounding and seeing their cohorts getting popped. These people might choose prison over death.

Another remote possibility is that it takes a few hours for the bombers to get into the theatre, but I doubt they will go this route. We tried this in Tora Bora and the enemey gave us the slip.

[arasina]

I know you posted this hours ago, but I am just now reading this thread.

The hard core jihadists they've got surrounded here are certainly not known to be type that would surrender.

I misread that as hard core journalists instead of jihadists because other posters had mentioned missing embedded journalists. Darn! I thought we had some leftist journalists cornered!