Al Qaeda Fighters Take Hits, Foes Say

After another night of relentless U.S. bombing, anti-Taliban forces took the ground above the trapped remnants of Osama bin Laden’s personal army Saturday, and commanders from both sides began a new round of surrender negotiations.

The peasant militias that make up the anti-Taliban forces here in eastern Afghanistan said they had advanced more than a mile up the rugged White Mountains around Tora Bora. The bombing was taking a heavy toll on the trapped Al Qaeda fighters, they said. One front-line commander said he had seen many bodies, and “they were in pieces from the bombing.”

But despite those claims--and the presence of an estimated 300 U.S. and British military personnel--the grand prize still eluded the ragtag militiamen: the destruction of the Al Qaeda terrorist network in Afghanistan and the capture or death of Bin Laden, the Saudi millionaire who has become the world’s highest-profile terrorist.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, touring Central Asian nations involved in the U.S.-led anti-terror effort, described modest progress by opposition fighters Saturday. But he told journalists traveling with him that it was too early for the United States to extract useful intelligence from Al Qaeda fighters who had surrendered at cave complexes in the Tora Bora region.

“The Al Qaeda forces are being pushed,” he said. “There have been some surrenders, and the bombing continues.”

Militia commanders said Friday that they had pinpointed the cave where Bin Laden was believed to be seeking refuge. They did not back off from that claim Saturday, but in brief interviews, they said they had no further information on his whereabouts. Some earlier unconfirmed reports said Bin Laden had escaped to Pakistan.

Reports emerged Saturday that U.S. forces had heard Bin Laden talking on short-range radio last week in the Tora Bora region. But a U.S. military commander in Washington said he could not confirm that information.

The latest negotiations for the surrender of Bin Laden’s men were being conducted with unidentified Al Qaeda military leaders late Saturday by two militia commanders, Hazrat Ali and Haji Mohammed Zaman, using two-way radios. Militia sources said 80% of Bin Laden’s 300 or so soldiers wanted to surrender but were demanding conditions, among them free passage out of the area. Ali and Zaman insisted that there could be no conditions.

It was unclear why the anti-Taliban militia leaders would start another round of negotiations. Settlement talks ended the Taliban and Al Qaeda presence in two important Afghan cities, Kunduz and Kandahar. But in Tora Bora, two surrender agreements fell apart at the eleventh hour last week.

In addition, tribal soldiers had just gained the upper hand militarily Saturday and appeared close to victory in what was shaping up as possibly the last big battle in the war against terrorism in Afghanistan.

Regardless of the outcome of the negotiations, anti-Taliban leaders said they were confident that Al Qaeda was nearly finished.

“We captured many places overnight,” commander Haji Zahir said. “We captured caves, weapons. They can’t do anything now. They will be killed or surrender.”

Zahir contended that Bin Laden’s troops consisted of about 180 Afghans and 120 foreigners, mostly Arabs, Chechens and Pakistanis. They were spread out in groups over about 8 square miles of forest, Zahir said, although radio conversations between the militia fighters indicated that most of Saturday’s activity was concentrated near a cave where earlier reports had suggested Bin Laden might be.

“I see one terrorist who is shooting on us from the front of the cave,” radioed one militiaman. Within minutes, the silver dot of a U.S. fighter bomber trailing white vapor streaked through the sky, and a bomb exploded on a ridgeline two miles from where more than 100 foreign journalists had gathered. Then, two more bombs struck.

“The first bomb was not on target,” came the voice. “But the second and third hit the target well. Now the person who was shooting at us is gone.”

A short while later, another radio message, monitored on the rocky ledge where the journalists were, said, “Tell the Americans to stop bombing, because we are on the peak of the mountain.”

The militias are not adequately supplied with ammunition or sufficiently clothed to hold positions in the towering ridges, where the bone-biting cold of an Afghan winter is starting to take hold. At night, they often climb down to lower elevations, yielding the positions they took during the day.

“You can’t stay up there at night and survive,” said 22-year-old Malang, who has only one name and goes into battle wearing sneakers and a blanket wrapped around his summer-weight robes. “You have to come down the mountain. Then the next day you have to retake the positions.”

Throughout the day, militia commanders hauled supplies up the mountain in Toyota trucks. One carried a large sheep that would serve as dinner. Overhead, American warplanes, including B-52 bombers, circled, dropping bombs that sent huge pillars of dark smoke rising from the earth. The airstrikes continued today.

“They are still shooting at us,” commander Khan Mohammed said Saturday of his Al Qaeda foes. “The war is intense, but we will catch them soon. There is nowhere they can escape.”

Pakistan is only a few miles from the ridgeline where the fighting was taking place. The government there says it has set up 300 checkpoints along the border. But although Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider said that “we have made it impossible for Bin Laden to enter our country,” people familiar with the territory point out that the border is long and porous and would be easy to slip across undetected.

Times staff writers Esther Schrader in Washington and John Hendren, traveling with the Defense secretary, contributed to this report.