Al-Qaeda Fighter in Tora Bora Face New Deadline for Surrender

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, December 13, 2001

Al-Qaeda Fighter in Tora Bora Face New Deadline for Surrender

Setting a new deadline for surrender, Afghan tribal commanders demanded Wednesday that trapped fighters of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda group turn over their leaders.

Setting a new deadline for surrender, Afghan tribal commanders demanded Wednesday that trapped fighters of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda group turn over their leaders.

American AC-130 gunships did not stop their attacks during the negotiations, strafing a desolate canyon in the White Mountains where a group of Arabs and other non-Afghans fighting for al-Qaeda were pinned down. Afghan tribal chiefs gave the fighters an ultimatum to lay down their arms by midday Thursday

Ghafar, a leader in the tribal eastern alliance, said the al-Qaeda fighters are believed to include some from a list of 22 "most wanted terrorists" made public by the Bush administration after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States.

"They have to hand them over, but they didn't (want to)," said Ghafar, who goes by one name. He said a plan for the fighters to surrender Wednesday morning collapsed in part over the refusal of leaders to give up. "They must turn over at least some of these people."

He said it was not certain if bin Laden was among them. U.S. and Afghan officials have said he may be in the Tora Bora region of caves and tunnels, where the eastern alliance �� backed by U.S. bombing �� has been besieging al-Qaeda.

Gen. Peter Pace, the vice chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said in Washington that the Pentagon does not know if the al-Qaeda leadership was in the Tora Bora area. He said it would be "great" if they were.

An undetermined number of foreign fighters is in the heavily forested canyon, where they fled after being routed from their mountaintop positions and caves the day before. The alliance had given them until 8 a.m. Wednesday to give themselves up, but the deadline passed with no surrender.

Ghafar said that during negotiations it became clear that only low-level al-Qaeda fighters planned to turn in their weapons and that senior officers would not.

The alliance suspected that top al-Qaeda leaders would have used any surrender to flee in small groups to other areas of Afghanistan or across the nearby border to Pakistan, he said. Thousands of Pakistani troops have deployed on the frontier to cut off escape routes.

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