A laptop computer used by al-Qaeda operational planner Khalid Shaikh Mohammed has yielded a list of at least half a dozen hiding places along the Pakistan-Afghan border used by Osama bin Laden and his supporters, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence officials said Wednesday. The discovery of the ”safe house” information accounts for recent statements by U.S. and Pakistani authorities that bin Laden could soon be found, U.S. intelligence officials said. The officials said the hideouts are residences of bin Laden supporters along the Pakistani-Afghan border where the terrorist leader and other members of his al-Qaeda network may have stayed previously. Since Mohammed’s March 1 arrest, there have been numerous reports, all of them apparently false, that bin Laden had been or was about to be captured. Pakistan, which is under pressure to support a U.S.-led war in Iraq and is seeking aid from the United States, has been working hard to show it is cooperating in the hunt for bin Laden and other terrorists. CIA paramilitary teams and Army Delta Force and Navy SEAL operatives are searching for bin Laden at safe houses in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier and Baluchistan provinces, the officials said. So far, only lower-level al-Qaeda operatives have been found there, Pakistani intelligence officials said. About a dozen have been arrested. Full Story
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