Forse in trappola il numero due di Al Qaeda

Le truppe pakistane potrebbero avere circondato il rifugio di Ayman al-Zawahri, il numero due di Osama Bin Laden, in un'area a ridosso della frontiera meridionale afghana:

Pakistani troops may have surrounded Osama bin Laden's number two during a major battle on the wild Afghan frontier on Thursday, top officials said.



President Pervez Musharraf told CNN that the ferocity of resistance his forces were meeting had led generals to believe they were shielding a "high-value target."



Al Qaeda fighters previously had melted away before a joint U.S.-Pakistani offensive going on for several days.



Musharraf would not speculate on whether it might be bin Laden himself (il grassetto è mio, NdR), the Western world's most wanted man, or his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri. But a senior government official in Islamabad told Reuters that Zawahri, bin Laden's right-hand man among the Islamist al Qaeda network, may indeed be surrounded.



"A pitched battle is going on there. The way these people are resisting, we think there is someone important over there," the senior official told Reuters in the Pakistani capital.



"We think al-Zawahri may be holed up there."

Fonte: Reuters.