(8 Mar 2003) A US military spokesman on Saturday denied Pakistani claims that two of Osama bin Laden’s sons were detained by US special forces during a recent raid in Rabat.
A top Pakistani provincial police official said the U.S.-led raid in southwestern Afghanistan killed seven al-Qaida men and wounded eight others – including two sons of Osama bin Laden.
Sanaullah Zehri, home minister of Pakistan’s Baluchistan province and the region’s top security official, said on Friday the allied raid occurred near Rabat, an area where the borders of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan converge.
He said on Pakistani television and told The Associated Press that bin Laden’s sons Saad and Hamza were captured and were in the hospital in Rabat being treated for wounds.
But Colonel Roger King, a U.S. military spokesman at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, said he did not have any information about bin Laden’s sons and denied U.S. and other coalition forces were involved in any operation in Rabat.
King said he knew of no involvement by CJTF-180 forces in any operations in the vicinity of Rabat.
CJTF-180 is the military acronym for coalition joint forces in Afghanistan.
And in Washington, U.S. counterterrorism officials strongly disputed the reports, saying they had no information to suggest the sons had been detained.
Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry spokesman, Mohammed Daoud, said he was unaware of a Rabat operation.
But Nafaas Khan, deputy inspector of police in Afghanistan’s Nimroz province where Rabat is located, said U.S. helicopters were seen over the town Friday.
Pakistani journalists who tried to get to Rabat on Friday were stopped by Pakistani security officers but one journalist quoted an Afghan security official just returned from Rabat as confirming that Saad bin Laden had been caught up in
the operation, but said he had no information about a second son.
Searches for Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida operatives have intensified since the capture last weekend of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the suspected third most powerful man in al-Qaida and planner of the September 11
attacks.
Saad bin Laden, believed to be 23 years old and Osama bin Laden’s eldest son, is also on the American most-wanted list and has been called a rising star in the terror network.
His father is believed to have as many as 23 sons by several wives.
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