A US TV network yesterday claimed that the hunt for Osama bin Laden had narrowed to a handful of suspected mountain hideouts in Afghanistan, which US troops had under 24-hour surveillance from the air and ground.
ABC News quoted intelligence sources as saying the debate was now about whether to go after bin Laden and other leaders of his al-Qaeda network by using 5,000lb "bunker buster" bombs, or to take the greater risk of sending in commandos. The advantage of the latter would be the certainty of knowing his fate.
A Pentagon spokesman, Rear Admiral John Stuffelbeem, would not confirm the report, however, saying bin Laden was "an elusive character". He said the noose was tightening but he did not want to "give the impression of imminence".
Admiral Stuffelbeem told the daily press briefing at the Pentagon that intelligence reports confirmed that a number of tribes in the south of the country were no longer "supportive of the Taliban", and one group was involved in military action against them.
He said that the bombing focus on the front lines was continuing and that the Taliban were facing "extreme difficulty" in resupplying troops in the north. But he admitted the US desire to quadruple its special forces on the ground to assist in targeting had been hampered yesterday by freezing low-level rain clouds.
The advent of winter was not of concern, he said, as US forces who were equipped with special winter gear would actually gain a relative advantage against the Taliban in such conditions. The US would be supplying winter gear to the Northern Alliance, he said.
"The enemy won't rest and nor will we," President Bush said yesterday, nailing suggestions that the US should ease back on its bombing campaign during Ramadan.
Speaking to journalists following a meeting with President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, Mr Bush sought to reinforce the administration's message that the campaign was on course.
"It's going to be a long struggle," he said, insisting that he had confidence in the patience of the American people.
In California, extra members of the National Guard have been called out to protect four major bridges, including the Golden Gate Bridge, after the Governor, Mr Gray Davis, warned of "credible evidence" that they would be targeted by terrorists next week.
But federal officials said the information they had given to Mr Davis, and which they recommended he should not make public, was "uncorroborated" and of a lower order of credibility than their own national threat announcement. A clearly embarrassed head of Homeland Security, Mr Tom Ridge, would only say Mr Davis was entitled to exercise his discretion.
In New York, hundreds of firefighters and police officers protested at the site of the World Trade Centre over the decision by the Mayor, Mr Rudy Giuliani, to cut back to a couple of dozen the numbers of emergency service workers on the site, ostensibly for health reasons.
The workers fear that building contractors will be authorised to ease back on the search for over 3,000 missing bodies as they remove rubble. A union statement referred to a "scoop and dump" operation.
There were some scuffles with police after which workers moved on to deposit a letter at City Hall. Mr Bob McGuire, a firefighter whose nephew, Mr Richard Allen, was among those missing, said remains had been loaded into trash bins.
"I don't want him to end up in a dumpster," Mr McGuire said.
In the first corroborated case of anthrax outside the US, a letter posted to a Pakistani newspaper has tested positive, and two have tested positive in Germany, while in New York the authorities have confirmed that the anthrax which killed a hospital worker, Ms Kathy Nguyen, earlier this week is the same strain sent to other known recipients.
"We received a press release envelope which contained white powder ... and it has tested positive for containing anthrax spores," Mehmood Sham, editor of the Daily Jang, Pakistan's leading Urdu-language daily, told Reuters. A government spokesman also confirmed that two earlier cases had been found but were not publicised for fear of causing panic.
The finds will strengthen the argument of those investigators who believe the anthrax attacks are related to September 11th and al-Qaeda. However, the head of the FBI, Mr Robert Mueller, yesterday said they were no closer to knowing who was responsible. He said the investigators of the 16 confirmed cases, four now dead, have received over 1,000 leads, 100 of them overseas, and had conducted 2,000 interviews.
Derek Scally reports from Berlin:
Germany's health minister said yesterday that tests at the national centre for disease control in Berlin showed earlier positive anthrax findings on packages found in Germany were false alarms.
Ms Ulla Schmidt told a news conference that, although final results were awaited, tests at the Robert Koch Institute on the suspicious packages showed that they did not contain anthrax as feared. The packages had been found recently in the eastern state of Thuringia and the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein.
The anthrax scare had reached Germany earlier yesterday when initial tests indicated traces of the bacteria in a letter and two packages.
