WASHINGTON - United States troops trying to find out who was killed in an attack on suspected al Qaeda leaders last week have recovered human remains from the site in southeastern Afghanistan.
They want to establish whether Osama bin Laden was one of the victims.
"There is a team there made up mostly of the 101st Airborne Division at a site near Zawar Khili and they located some forensic evidence at the site," said Captain Robert Riggle, a spokesman at US Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida.
US officials said a remote-controlled CIA drone aircraft fired missiles which killed a tall man who appeared to be at the centre of a group of al Qaeda members.
This has sparked the speculation that it may have been bin Laden.
US news reports said a team of 50 US soldiers, including forensics experts, had found human remains in the attack area, 35km southwest of Khost and 15km from the Pakistani border.
The reports said the team was gathering DNA material to compare with DNA samples supplied to the US by bin Laden relatives.
A US senator said intelligence suggested bin Laden remained alive.
"We don't know where bin Laden is. The best intelligence is he is still alive but where he is continues to be a question mark," said Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Yesterday, the Times newspaper reported that the US was preparing to launch surveillance flights over Somalia and Yemen in the next phase of its war against terrorism.
Britain, France and Germany are about to offer support to Washington as it turns its attention to two countries it believes are harbouring al Qaeda terrorist training camps.
No decision has been taken on the air support the three European Nato allies will provide.
"It won't be on the scale of Afghanistan but there is enough information about Somalia and Yemen to merit a coalition operation," a military source told the paper.
The US has already carried out several reconnaissance flights over Somalia to look for the camps.
By contrast a military intervention against Iraq, accused by US President George W. Bush of being part of an "axis of evil" with Iran and North Korea, seems unlikely at present, the paper said.
British sources said that at this stage there were no plans to send British troops to Somalia or Yemen.
In Singapore the Straits Times reported that Indonesia had uncovered a document detailing plans for the concerted bombing of the US embassies in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta by Muslim militants late last year.
The paper said it obtained a copy of "Jihad Operation in Asia" which showed three-man teams from the Jemaah Islamiah group intended to detonate satchels of C-4 explosive in the compounds of the three missions on December 4.
The paper said it understood that Indonesian intelligence officers found the 15-page document, written in Arabic and Bahasa Indonesian, in Solo in central Java last October.
Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines have rounded up dozens of suspected Muslim militants since December.
- REUTERS
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