Steve Quayle News Alerts

July 15, 2002

Osama bin Laden is alive and in good health after being wounded in an attack on his base in Afghanistan in December, an Arab journalist with close ties to the Saudi-born dissident’s associates said on Monday. However, the veracity of the report could not be immediately confirmed as the reporter did not see or speak with bin Laden himself.

ABDEL-BARI ATWAN, editor of the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi magazine, said bin Laden’s followers had told him bin Laden would not appear on video again until al-Qaida had launched another attack on the United States.
“His people said he was wounded in the shoulder by shrapnel. He is in good health now,” Atwan said. He said the injury was sustained during a U.S.-led assault on his headquarters in the Tora Bora mountains in eastern Afghanistan in December.
“They also said bin Laden would not appear in a video and just say words,” he said. “He will make another appearance only after his people attack the Americans again.”
A senior U.S. official told NBC News that it could not verify the report.
“We don’t know,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We can’t say it’s not true, but there is no indication it is true.”
The United States blames bin Laden and his al-Qaida network for the Sept. 11 hijacked airliner attacks on U.S. landmarks which killed more than 3,000 people.
Bin Laden made a series of defiant videotapes broadcast on television as U.S. warplanes pounded Afghanistan to destroy the ruling Taliban militia and al-Qaida. He has recently stayed out of sight, raising questions over whether he survived the bombing.
Atwan said bin Laden’s followers were now seeking maximum publicity through an attack on the United States, and were trying to capitalize on Arab fury with the United States for its support for Israel and its plans to topple Iraq’s leadership.
“They said they would attack and take advantage of the political climate in the Arab world at a time when there is a lot of hatred against the United States,” Atwan said.

TRAIL GONE COLD
U.S.-led coalition troops continue to conduct military operations in Afghanistan aimed at routing at remaining al-Qaida and Taliban fighters. The search has increasingly focused on the central province of Uruzgan, a region dominated by ethnic Pashtuns.
On July 1, Afghan officials say 48 Afghan civilians were killed and 117 others were injured July 1 when a U.S. AC-130 gunship fired on several villages in Uruzgan province. Among the dead were 25 people at a wedding celebration, Afghans say.
It was one of a series of mistaken U.S. bombing raids in ethnic Pashtun areas that Afghans say have resulted in heavy casualties. The U.S. military says it is targeting opposition fighters.
On Monday, Deputy U.S. Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who is visiting Afghanistan, said the U.S. government was justified in the July 1 air raid because it was aimed at where “bad guys” were hiding.
“We are always concerned when we believe we may have killed innocent people and we think that happened and we regret that,” Wolfowitz said at Bagram air base, headquarters for U.S. military operations in Afghanistan. “We have no regrets about going in after bad guys and there were some there.”
Wolfowitz was due to meet President Hamid Karzai in the Afghan capital of Kabul later Monday.
Since the attacks, U.S. forces have been fired on several times in different parts of Afghanistan. It was not clear if the attacks on U.S. troops are linked to the airstrike.

PROBE TO BEGIN
U.S. investigators arrived Saturday. Brig. Gen. Tony Przybyslawski, the assistant director of operations at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, said his 12-member team would work closely with Afghan officials, visit the site and interview witnesses.
“This is no easy task as you can imagine,” Przybyslawski said. “Of the utmost importance is, obviously, to prevent these types of situations from ever occurring during this combat operation.”
In response to the civilian deaths, the governor of Kandahar province, Gul Agha Sherzai, demanded that U.S. troops seek local permission before striking at suspected al-Qaida and Taliban units in the south. The United States opposes the idea.
Sherzai also wants a 500-man rapid reaction force to hunt down Taliban and al-Qaida fugitives and a 3,000-strong unit to patrol part of the borders with Pakistan and Iran.
Some southern governors met late Sunday and early Monday to discuss Sherzai’s plan, which could undermine a U.S.-backed plan to build an ethnically mixed national army controlled by Karzai’s government.
Sherzai expected six southern governors to attend, but only one other — Farah provincial Gov. Abdul Hai — showed up, said Amhed Wali Karzai, the Afghan president’s brother and special envoy to Kandahar, where the meeting occurred.
The governors of Zabul, Nimroz, Helmand and Uruzgan provinces did not attend, he said. Sherzai’s proposals were unlikely to succeed without the support of those absent officials, Karzai said.
In Bagram, Wolfowitz spoke to U.S. soldiers, whom he thanked for their bravery and skill.
He said “maybe half” of the top al-Qaida and Taliban leaders had been caught and “the ones that are still left ... are hard to find.”
“We will be here as long as it takes to do the job,” Wolfowitz said.

NBC’s Robert Windrem, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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