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| Wednesday, 18 August 2004 |
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Al-Qaeda fleeing Pakistan in wake of crackdown: Musharraf ISLAMABAD, Tuesday (AFP) President Pervez Musharraf said that a crackdown by Pakistani security forces against Al-Qaeda militants has forced members of the terror network to move to other countries. "They are desperate. They are trying to move away. They are perhaps trying to relocate elsewhere in the world," Musharraf said during a state television interview. Pakistani security forces have mounted several successful operations netting up to 600 Al-Qaeda agents including several key operatives who had fled Afghanistan after the US-led invasion of 2001, the president said. "We are on the winning side... we have major successes" in the fight against extremists, Musharraf said. "We are attacking the masterminds to dry up the source of terrorism and they are on the run," he added. Security forces captured Naeem Noor Khan, a 25-year-old Pakistani computer expert from the eastern city of Lahore in mid-July. Khan has provided investigators with one of the biggest troves of information ever unearthed on Osama bin Laden's shadowy terrorist network, leading to the capture of major Al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan and Britain and revealing fresh plans to launch terrorist attacks in the US. Meanwhile Two bombs exploded on a railway track minutes after a passenger train passed over it in Pakistan's southern Sindh province, killing no one but cutting off a major rail link, police said. The first bomb went off 15 minutes after the train crossed the southern city of Nawabshah, 250 km (150 miles) north of the port city of Karachi, they said. The second bomb exploded a few minutes after the first blast, wounding two policemen and a journalist who were inspecting the site, a police official said. No group claimed responsibility, but police called it an act of terror. "The bombing was aimed to kill innocent people," said Ghullam Sarwar Jamali, a senior police official. "It is an act of terrorism." In recent months, there have been a spate of attacks in Pakistan's major cities. Police blame most of these on Islamic militants angered by their government's support for the U.S.-led war on terror. |
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