PAKISTAN: Pakistani security forces missed a chance to catch al-Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri, the government's senior interior ministry official said yesterday.
Zawahri and al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden have been in hiding since the September 11th, 2001, attacks on the United States and are both believed to be in ethnic Pashtun tribal lands that straddle northwest Pakistan's border with Afghanistan.
Rehman Malik told a news conference that Zawahri was moving between Pakistan's tribal areas and the eastern Afghan provinces of Kunar and Paktia.
"We certainly had traced him at one place, but we missed the chance. So he's moving in Mohmand and, of course, sometimes in Kunar, mostly in Kunar and Paktia," he said.
Mr Malik said Pakistani Taliban were working closely with al-Qaeda, providing them with shelter and acting as their mouthpiece.
"They have not only connections, I would say Tehrik-e-Taliban is an extension of al-Qaeda," he said, referring to a Pakistani Taliban umbrella group which authorities blame for a string of bomb attacks over the past year that have killed hundreds of people.
Pakistan last month banned the Taliban group, which was also accused of the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in December.
The resignation of staunch US ally Pervez Musharraf as president last month raised questions about the government's commitment to the unpopular US-led campaign against militancy.
Meanwhile, foreign troops accidentally killed three children in southeastern Afghanistan yesterday, the Nato-led force said.
The latest civilian deaths, in Paktika province, are likely to sharpen the rift between foreign forces and the Afghan government, which says more than 500 civilians have been killed this year.
- (Reuters)