Fourteen die as al Qaeda prisoners seize weapons

19 Dec, 2001 07:48 PM3 mins to read

8.30 am

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Fourteen people were killed on Wednesday when captured fighters of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda seized Pakistani army guards' weapons while being moved to jail by bus and opened fire.

The gunbattle in the Kurram tribal agency near the Afghan frontier region of Tora Bora sparked a huge manhunt, with the army sealing off the rugged area while helicopters swept overhead seeking escaped prisoners, a senior local official said.

Eight suspected al Qaeda Arabs, five Pakistani soldiers and paramilitary troops and a bus driver were killed in the clash, which broke out as 156 prisoners were being taken to a jail in Kohat by bus from a detention centre in Parachinar.

Six Pakistanis were wounded, officials said.

A senior official of the North West Frontier Province government said 40 prisoners had escaped and 17 were believed to be still at large. "The entire area has been cordoned off. We are after them," he added.

The prisoners, mainly Arabs who had escaped from eastern Afghanistan in recent weeks, were aboard three buses, one of which overturned during the revolt, Secretary of Information Sayed Anwar Mehmood said. They had not been handcuffed.

Many of them were Yemenis, who had fled a blistering US aerial bombardment of the Tora Bora mountains where Osama bin Laden had been believed to be hiding and were captured by Pakistani border patrols.

The revolt resembled a similar uprising by al Qaeda and Taleban prisoners in Qala-i-Janghi fort in Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan last month in which hundreds of the captives were killed after trying to overcome their guards.

Troops, some on horseback and others dropped onto hilltops by helicopter, have boosted border patrols to prevent the entry of bin Laden and capture his fleeing al Qaeda fighters.

The number of al Qaeda fighters taken prisoner while crossing from Tora Bora into Pakistan's Kurram tribal agency alone had reached 39, many of them Yemenis, a local official said on Wednesday.

Eight of them were arrested late on Sunday, the official told Reuters, adding that they were from Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Morocco and Sudan.

US special forces are believed to want to interrogate them about the whereabouts of Saudi-born bin Laden, accused by Washington of masterminding the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The official in Parachinar said more al Qaeda fighters had left their hideouts in Tora Bora and were heading towards the Pakistani border. He said Pakistani border forces were ready to seize them, but declined to give further details.

Helicopters had landed troops on remote mountain peaks on the Pakistani side of the frontier, he said. "Areas formerly inaccessible have been manned by army troops," the official said.

The army was using horses and mules to take supplies to border posts on mountain peaks and ridges in an area that operates by its own laws but has, in a rare break with custom, allowed in the Pakistan army.

At the southwestern end of the porous 2500 km frontier, security has been beefed up and patrols increased, a border official told Reuters in Chaman on the frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan's Baluchistan province.

US planes are flying over the deserts and mountains along the inhospitable and rugged border to prevent the escape of al Qaeda fighters, he said.

Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar told Reuters yesterday that Pakistan was doing all it could to stop al Qaeda forces crossing the border.

- REUTERS

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