The hunt for Osama bin Laden intensified today along Pakistan's northwest border with Afghanistan as a senior official warned the al-Qaeda leader could not hide for much longer.
A security official named the mountain border district of Chitral, 300 kilometres northwest of the capital Islamabad, as a focus of the hunt.
The narrowing of the hunt was based on information gleaned from imprisoned al-Qaeda number three, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was captured in a pre-dawn swoop on a house in the northern city of Rawalpindi Saturday.
"There are some very important pieces of information with us," the official said. "If the information is accurate, then he cannot hide for long."
However he cautioned that there were question marks over the veracity of Sheikh Mohammed's revelations.Sheikh Mohammed had revealed that he last met bin Laden in November or December, but would only give the location as "a mountainous region".
The hunt had also stepped up for bin Laden's deputy Ayman al-Zawahri, an Egyptian physician, in Baluchistan - the southwest province bordering Iran and Afghanistan.
Among the documents found on Sheikh Mohammed were documents indicating that al-Zawahri was hiding in Pakistan's largest province.
The documents included undated handwritten letters in Arabic, which investigators said matched bin Laden's handwriting.
Since Sheikh Mohammed's capture, US planes have been seen airdropping leaflets over Baluchistan-Afghan border areas offering money for information leading to the capture of bin Laden or al-Zawahri.
The remote mountainous region is home to fiercely independent Pashtun tribes who are deeply conservative Islamists and are of the same ethnic group as the Taliban. Anti-US sentiments run high among the tribes.
The Financial Times, quoting unidentified intelligence officials, reported meanwhile that the area in which bin Laden is being hunted had been narrowed to "a coastal strip close to the Iranian border.
AFP