| Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, November 19, 2001 |
Taleban Abandon bin Laden |
Osama bin Laden was left isolated and on the run in Afghanistan Sunday night after the routed Taleban leadership left him to his fate.
The Taleban, who harboured their guest for years and refused to hand him over after the September 11 attacks, declared that he no longer enjoyed their protection and was beyond their help.
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Osama bin Laden was left isolated and on the run in Afghanistan Sunday night after the routed Taleban leadership left him to his fate.
The Taleban, who harboured their guest for years and refused to hand him over after the September 11 attacks, declared that he no longer enjoyed their protection and was beyond their help.
With most of Afghanistan now in the hands of opposition groups, and the Taleban reduced to two shrinking pockets of control around Konduz and Kandahar, bin Laden and his al-Qaeda supporters found themselves alone and for the first time on the front line of the war.
Hundreds of American and British special forces troops were yesterday criss-crossing the rugged mountains of southern and eastern Afghanistan on one of the greatest manhunts in history. Downing Street said that coalition forces were gaining new intelligence material which could lead them to pinpoint their quarry.
Bin Laden, who is travelling with his three wives, children, bodyguards and advisers, is thought to be moving in a convoy of Jeeps from one bunker to another.
Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taleban's Ambassador to Pakistan, displayed little interest in his fate. I do not know where he is; whether he is in other areas of Afghanistan or has left Afghanistan, he said. But I know this much: he is not in the area of our control.
With bin Laden on the run, US fighter-bombers have stepped up their pounding of suspected safe houses and caves, directed by spy planes and satellites. The intensity of the bombing was clear yesterday with reports of 30 people killed in the village of Shamshad, five miles from the Pakistani border. Earlier 62 people were reportedly killed in another attack on an Islamic religious school near Khost.
In Kandahar and Konduz, al-Qaeda forces have begun to clash with their erstwhile Taleban allies. Afghan Taleban fighters have been massacred by fundamentalist foreign forces in Konduz and Sunday night moderate Taleban commanders were reported to have offered to switch sides.
The narrowing focus of the allied military bombing operation marked a shift from the attacks on Taleban front lines to the destruction of bin Laden's hiding places.
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