PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani security forces have arrested at least two foreigners in the northwestern city of Peshawar for suspected links to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network, intelligence sources said on Monday.
Those held in a raid in an upmarket neighborhood of the city late on Saturday included an Iraqi and an Iranian, said one intelligence source, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Another source said five suspects had been arrested, three of them Arabs and two Afghans. The sources did not identify those held but said they were suspected of having links to al Qaeda.
On March 1, Pakistani authorities said they had arrested top al Qaeda figure Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
Pakistani officials said Mohammed’s interrogation could lead to more al Qaeda arrests and it raised hopes for the eventual capture of al Qaeda leader bin Laden.
Both bin Laden and the leader of Afghanistan’s former Taliban regime, Mullah Omar, have remained elusive more than a year after the Taliban was ousted by U.S. air assaults and opposition forces.
Many al Qaeda and Taliban fugitives are thought to have taken refuge in the rugged borderlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan and U.S. officials said last week they believed bin Laden himself was hiding there.
Pakistan, a former supporter of the Taliban but which became a key supporter of the U.S.-led war on terror after the Sept. 11 attacks, says it has arrested more than 480 militants since the fall of the Taliban.
Pakistani officials say Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was arrested in the town of Rawalpindi with two other suspects, including Saudi Ahmed al-Hawsawi.
Officials said those arrests came after that of a foreign al Qaeda suspect in mid February in the town of Quetta bordering Afghanistan.
Speculation that U.S. forces could be closing in on the world’s most wanted man has been rife since Mohammed’s arrest, which U.S. officials called the biggest catch so far in the war on terror.