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Close calls in hunt for Osama
27/09/2006 10:43 - (SA)
Some of the rumours, false hopes and legitimate close calls in the hunt for Osama bin Laden.
August 1998: US President Bill Clinton orders a Tomahawk missile strike against two al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, narrowly missing Bin Laden. The al-Qaeda leader had apparently just left one of the camps.
November-December 2001: US and Afghan forces pummel Bin Laden's mountain hideout at Tora Bora, Afghanistan. Reports of his death prove false and he escapes into Pakistan.
November 2002: Widespread reports that bin Laden is suffering from kidney disease are discounted by his doctor, who tells The Associated Press he saw Bin Laden after the September 11, 2001 attacks and that he was in good health.
March 2003: Pakistani military sources say Bin Laden is boxed into a remote 350-mile corridor stretching from the south-western Pakistani town of Chaman to the Afghan-Iranian border.
Late 2003: Pakistani forces raid the village of Lattaka in tribal North Waziristan on a tip that Bin Laden was hiding there.
January 2004: A top American military commander says he is confident Bin Laden will be brought to justice by year's end.
February 2004: An Iranian state-run radio station reports Bin Laden is in the hands of Pakistan's intelligence agency. The source, a Pakistani journalist, says he was misquoted.
September 2006: A leaked French intelligence report cites a usually reliable source claiming Bin Laden died of typhoid in Pakistan the month before.
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