Pakistani aircraft are expected this morning to try to bomb a precise location on the mountainous Pakistan-Afghan border where last night a government official said al-Qaeda's number two, Ayman al-Zawahri, may be hiding.
President Pervez Musharraf told CNN yesterday the ferocity of resistance his forces were meeting on the Afghan border had led his generals to believe fighters were shielding a "high-value target".
Later, a senior Pakistan official said in Islamabad: "A pitched battle is going on there. The way these people are resisting, we think there is someone important over there. We think al-Zawahri may be holed up there."
Al-Zawahri is believed to be the right-hand man to Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, and is reputed to be the organisation's intellectual force. He described the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington as "a great victory that was achieved only thanks to God".
Gen Musharraf would not speculate on whether it might be bin Laden himself, but a senior government official later discounted speculation that he might be surrounded.
A CNN correspondent in Pakistan, Aaron Brown, believed a further offensive would begin today: "Sometime after light fall it sounds like [Pakistani forces\] will go in with helicopter gunships and they may go in with fixed wing . . . The plan is to go in by air tomorrow, or at least first light."
US blue-chip stocks rose slightly yesterday afternoon as reports that Pakistani forces were closing in on a key al-Qaeda figure tempered security fears. Technology stocks were lower.
The news, along with some encouraging economic data, helped blue-chips recover from an earlier security alert on a major European train service and a spike in oil prices, reviving fears of inflation. - (Reuters)