Militia commander identifies bin Laden residence

Standing outside a compound where one of bin Laden's wives lived with their children, local militia commander Mohamed Nawab said bin Laden often spent his days in the eastern provincial capital of Jalalabad but went to the mud-brick compound in Farmada at night to visit his family.

Nawab said bin Laden rented the compound from militia commander Mullah Yunus Khalis, a Muslim fundamentalist who fought the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, later allied himself with the Taliban and only recently defected to anti-Taliban forces.

Nawab's claims could not be independently confirmed. If true, however, they would be the first detailed account of bin Laden's whereabouts since U.S. airstrikes began last month.

Bin Laden was no stranger to Farmada, a farm village about 15 miles from Jalalabad. The farm's previous owner, a former guerrilla leader known as Engineer Mahmood, was the person who invited bin Laden to settle in Afghanistan in 1996.

Khalis' militia, which controls Farmada, remain suspicious of militiamen loyal to Abdul Qadir, the main anti-Taliban leader in Jalalabad.

Housing compounds in Farmada were nicknamed "Families" because they were home to the wives and children of Arab fighters, he said, adding that bin Laden moved there shortly after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan.

"He was living here for quite a long time," Nawab said. Anti-Soviet fighters were given the houses in 1992, he said.

The walled compound where he said bin Laden stayed, with running water and electricity from a generator, has six one-bedroom apartments inside, including a workshop and what appeared to be a library.

Next to stacks of Islamic texts were manuals for military communications equipment and weapons, as well as a brochure for U.S.-made chemical and biological weapon detection and alarm devices.

Among the debris were electronics components, empty film canisters and an American Red Cross directory.

Bin Laden's compound had been cleaned out since two journalists, one Spanish and one Italian, reported finding vials with Cyrillic letters reading "sarin" – a nerve gas – in one of the storerooms. Qadir and area commanders denied finding anything resembling chemical weapons.

In Washington, the Pentagon confirmed Thursday that U.S. jets had bombed an al-Qaida base and a suspected chemical weapons factory near Jalalabad.

Even though the Farmada area is nominally under the control of an anti-Taliban militia, U.S. warplanes dropped bombs Thursday night on a training camp 700 yards from bin Laden's former home 6 miles southwest of Jalalabad. Also bombed was another al-Qaida base called Darunta, west of Jalalabad.

Throughout the area, disabled Taliban tanks sit under trees and the center of the training camp is littered with yellow cluster bombs, some unexploded with their tiny parachutes still attached.

"Why are the Americans bombing us?" asked Azat Allah, a militiaman loyal to Khalis guarding the former al-Qaida base. "I think there is nothing around here, so the Americans should stop bombing us."

But other militiamen said the families of some al-Qaida members still live in the compounds around bin Laden's former home, and that Arab fighters hiding in the mountains near Tora Bora, 25 miles southwest of Jalalabad, sometimes venture down to visit them.

Some of Allah's comrades are former Taliban fighters, and Qadir's militiamen describe Khalis' fighters as being half-loyal to the Taliban and half-loyal to Qadir.

When journalists requested Khalis' permission to visit the bin Laden compound, four senior Taliban commanders were with him.

Qadir has said he is attempting to negotiate the surrender of an estimated 2,000 Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in Tora Bora.