Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden is living comfortably in a house in north-west Pakistan close to his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, CNN on Monday quoted a Nato official as saying. It also said that the al Qaeda number two, the Egyptian-born Zawahiri, was living close to him. "Nobody in al Qaeda is living in a cave," the unnamed senior Nato official is quoted as saying in a report datelined Kabul.
"The official also confirmed the US assessment that Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, has moved between the cities of Quetta and Karachi over the last several months," claim the report on CNN's website. Pakistani authorities have denied they are providing protection for the terror mastermind, who has a 25 million dollar US bounty on his head.
"It is a baseless assertion, we reject it," a foreign ministry official told AFP. "The report has not been substantiated by any evidence and has just been put out to malign Pakistan," the official said on condition of anonymity. He said that Pakistani security forces are present in North Waziristan and other tribal areas and if they had known that senior al Qaeda members were nearby, "we would have taken action immediately." A Nato spokesman said the alliance had no immediate comment.
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