Osama bin Laden has left the Tora Bora area in eastern Afghanistan, now under intensive bombing by US warplanes and has taken refuge in an unknown location, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press said today.
Quoting informed sources, the private news agency said bin Laden had arrived in the eastern city of Jalalabad and then travelled to Tora Bora after the fall of Kabul to Northern Alliance forces on November 6th.
He remained in Tora Bora in the White Mountains to the south of Jalalabad until around November 25th or 26th - the 10th day of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, AIP said.
After the 10th of Ramadan, Osama bin Laden disappeared from Tora Bora and left for some unknown place, AIP quoted its source as saying.
Earlier tribal fighters today claimed to have captured a cave in Tora Bora that apparently had been occupied recently by Osama bin Laden.
Eastern alliance chief Mr Hazrat Ali said his forces had also surrounded a large number of al-Qaeda fighters and that there were unconfirmed reports bin Laden might be among them.
Mr Ali did not say how long ago bin Laden might have been in the cave located on or near a rugged ridge in the foothills of the White Mountains, which has been pounded by US air strikes.
US aircraft are bombing eastern Afghan mountains today, targeting al-Qaeda fighters as heavily armed marines took over the airport in the southern city of Kandahar.
After several days of relentless bombing, US aircraft have cornered many of the remnants of al-Qaeda in the barren Tora Bora - or black dust - region about 40 kilometres south of Jalalabad.
Any surrender plans have gone up in smoke and an anti-Taliban tank commander said yesterday he saw no early end to the fighting. "There are many mountains, and as we take one we come to another," he said.
US officials believe bin Laden is in the area because of the fierce resistance, reports from opposition fighters he had been sighted and other pieces of intelligence, a senior defence official told reporters.
US Defense Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday bin Laden was believed to be in Afghanistan, despite recent media reports that he might have fled across the border to Pakistan.
In the south of the country, hundreds of heavily armed US marines swept into Kandahar airport by land and air.
In the capital, Kabul, moves to assemble an internationally backed Afghan government were gathering pace.
Prime Minister-designate Mr Hamid Karzai yesterday met ex-President Mr Burhanuddin Rabbani and other leaders in the presidential palace.
AFP