Pakistani troops believe they have surrounded a "high value target" during a battle with al-Qaeda militants loyal to Osama bin Laden close to the Afghan border, President Pervez Musharraf said this evening.
"(Judging by) the resistance that is being offered by the people there, we feel that there may be a high value target," Gen Musharraf told CNN.
He declined to speculate on his identity but a Pakistani official told Reuters it may be Osama bin Laden's number two - Ayman al-Zawahri.
Asked if it could be bin Laden or his deputy Zawahri, Gen Musharraf said: "I am not going to say that because my previous experience is that whatever I say, headlines come that 'he says Zawahri is there, or Osama'. I can't. It would just be a guess. But I think that very likely there is a high value target. Who I don't know."
A senior Pakistani government official said: "A pitched battle is going on there. The way these people are resisting, we think there is someone important over there."
"We think al-Zawahri may be holed up there."
The Pakistan government plans an airstrike on the enclave tomorrow morning, it was reported. "Sometime after light fall it sounds like they will go in with helicopter gunships and they may go in with fixed wing. ... The plan is to go in by air tomorrow, or at least first light," CNN correspondent Aaron Brown said, speaking from Pakistan.
Brown said his sources, which included Pakistani intelligence sources, believed al-Zawahri was among 200 well-equipped al-Qaeda fighters cornered near the Afghan border.
Pakistani forces launched a fresh offensive today against suspected al-Qaeda fighters and their Pakistani tribesmen allies near the Afghan border.
Fighting went on through the day and the sound of shelling in the South Waziristan region could be heard late into the evening.
Sixteen soldiers and 24 suspected militants were killed in fighting in the same area on Tuesday. The dead suspected militants included men believed to be foreigners loyal to bin Laden.