Pakistan keeps heat on militants

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- Hundreds of suspected al-Qaida fighters continued to battle withering fire from helicopter gunships and artillery Friday as Pakistan's military vowed to crush militants who might have been defending Osama bin Laden's top deputy.

Several thousand reinforcements poured into the tribal region of South Waziristan on the Afghan border to back up about 7,000 Pakistani soldiers and paramilitary forces locked in combat with the militants since Tuesday.

Security forces began house-to-house searches Friday on the outskirts of Azam Warsak and other villages near Wana, the administrative center of South Waziristan, senior officials said. They called the search operation slow and tricky as militants continued to put up heavy resistance.

"The mission is to get these people dead or alive," Pakistani military spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan said.

President Pervez Musharraf had said in a televised interview Thursday that the fierce resistance suggested that the militants might be protecting a "high-value target" such as one of al-Qaida's top leaders.

He did not name anyone, but Pakistani and U.S. officials later said intelligence suggested Ayman Zawahiri, al-Qaida's organizational leader and bin Laden's top aide, might be trapped within the cordon Pakistani forces have put around several villages in the remote northwest frontier.

"We still believe that one important figure is present in the Shin Warsak area," a senior Pakistani official said.

A U.S. intelligence official said "indicators" point to the possibility that Zawahiri is among the holed-up fighters, but he declined to provide details and said some government intelligence analysts remain skeptical.

"There's certainly a major firefight going on, and it could go on for days," the intelligence official said. "Exactly who's inside that ring is unclear. Some of the people in there are clearly not tribal militias. Some of the dead they've pulled out are believed to be Chechens, some of the people are Arabs."

He noted that the targeted area is so large -- 20 square miles -- that it would be difficult to seal it off completely.

A Pentagon official familiar with the intelligence briefings provided to Defense Department leaders said the reports that Zawahiri is trapped appear to be highly speculative. "I haven't seen anything that would give me . . . high confidence in having a particular high- value target in there," the official said.

U.S. officials continued to insist that Americans are not involved in the fighting or present at the scene. But they said the United States is providing intelligence support with surveillance aircraft, satellite photography, Predator drones and other equipment.

What began Tuesday as a limited mission to search suspected militant hide-outs exploded into intense fighting in a tribal area that has long been largely off-limits to central authority.Quoting local officials, Khan said security forces had encircled about 40 militants in the volatile village of Shin Warsak, where Zawahiri was believed to be cornered.

But, "There is no concrete evidence of the presence of al- Zawahiri or any other top lieutenant of Osama bin Laden," he added. "This is just speculation."

The number of militant casualties is not known, but at least 15 Pakistani soldiers have been killed in the fighting, the military said. At least one civilian was killed and a child and seven women were wounded in Thursday's battles, officials said.

Retired army Brig. Mahmood Shah, who is responsible for security in the tribal areas, said troops gave residents a three-hour warning to flee Thursday morning before launching a heavy assault with artillery and helicopter gunships.

The rugged border region is semiautonomous and fiercely has resisted outside rule for centuries. Most of the region's people are ethnic Pashtuns, whose ethnic ties straddle the Afghan border. Members of the tribe formed the hard-line Taliban militia in the early 1990s.

Two years ago, Musharraf announced that he would try to do what the former British Raj and successive Pakistani governments had failed to do: impose greater government control over the border regions, known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

When tribesmen resisted, Musharraf invoked a 1901 British colonial law, the draconian Frontier Crimes Regulation, which allows collective punishment for resisters, such as the destruction of houses and detention without charge.

Contributing: Greg Miller

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