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Fall of Tora Bora, Search for Bin Laden Continues
KABUL, Dec 11 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Al-Qaeda fighters loyal to Osama bin Laden agreed to surrender to militia forces after fierce fighting on the rugged Tora Bora mountain region in eastern Afghanistan Tuesday, a local commander said.
Haji Mohammad Zaman, one of three local group leaders engaged in a week-long battle against the last al-Qaeda stronghold, told journalists of the surrender following several hours of fighting, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Zaman said the mostly foreign al-Qaeda fighters had agreed to come down from the mountain at 8:00 am (0330 GMT) Wednesday. "Its finished," Zaman said. "They told us, 'We don't want to fight with you, we surrender'," reported AFP.
It was not immediately clear how many out of the total al-Qaeda forces had surrendered, or whether bin Laden was himself among them.
"We control all of the Melawa and Tora Bora area," military commander Hazrat Ali told reporters earlier, "except for one place," which he described as a "five by five kilometer" [three by three mile] region called Regan.
Asked whether bin Laden could also be in that area, Ali said he was certain "ninety percent he is in that Regan place".
The anti-Taliban Northern Alliance said earlier Tuesday that its forces, backed by U.S. B-52 bombers, had captured strategic heights.
According to the Alliance, the al-Qaeda leader is still in the area, but Washington said it could not confirm bin Laden's whereabouts.
Afghan soldiers on the frontlines said U.S. helicopters were involved in overnight air raids and one said he saw about 25 all-terrain vehicles full of U.S. troops pass his position during the night, AFP reported.
They were heading toward Melawa mountain and although some returned during the night, others were still there, he said.
Another Afghan fighter said he saw about 10 U.S. vehicles carrying 60 to 70 U.S. troops during the night after his unit was advised by radio that the Americans were coming.
Most of Tuesday's shelling was concentrated on a wooded zone near the summit of Tora Bora mountain. Explosions were heard and clouds of smoke rose from the summit amid the din of assault rifles, machine guns and mortars.
After a night of air and artillery strikes, three Soviet-made T-55 tanks were deployed on a hillside opposite the mountain and a fourth light tank was operating from a valley near Tora Bora village.
U.S. military sources could not confirm Taliban's claims, nor say for certain whether bin Laden was in the region, but said they had dropped one of the biggest conventional bombs in their arsenal - a 7.5-ton (15,000-pound) "daisy cutter" - on one of the caves in the Tora Bora complex.
Earlier Tuesday, Afghan anti-Taliban fighters said they have seized a key supply tunnel in the Tora Bora cave complex, reported BBC's online news service.
On the diplomatic front, U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi arrived in Kabul for talks with leaders who will run Afghanistan after December 22.
Brahimi met Tuesday in Kabul with Afghan foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah and defense minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim "about a smooth transition of power" in Afghanistan, the U.N. envoy's spokesman, Ahmed Fawzi told journalists.
A meeting was also possible with Hamid Karzai, the Pashtun who will head the six-month interim administration that takes over on December 22 under an agreement reached by anti-Taliban Afghan groups last week in Bonn, Germany.
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