Washington, October 18
World's most wanted terrorists Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri may be hiding close to each other in houses in northwest Pakistan, protected by some members of ISI, a media report said today.

The two top Al-Qaida commanders may not be together and are not living in caves as foreseen by American experts to evade detection, the CNN reported quoting a top NATO officer based in Afghanistan. “Nobody in the Al-Qaida is living in a cave,” the official said. Rather, the Al-Qaida's top leadership is believed to be living in relative comfort, protected by locals and some members of the Pakistani intelligence services ISI, the official said. Pakistan has repeatedly denied protecting members of the Al-Qaida leadership.

The official said, “The general region where Osama is likely to have moved around in recent year’s ranges from the mountainous Chitral area in the far northwest near the Chinese border, to the Kurram Valley, which neighbours Afghanistan's Tora Bora, one of the Taliban strongholds during the US invasion in 2001.” Tora Bora is also the region from which Osama is believed to have escaped during a US bombing raid in late 2001. US officials have long said there had been no confirmed sightings of Osama or Zawahiri for several years.

Pakistan's Interior Minister Rehman Malik today said: “Similar reports of bin Laden and Mullah Omar's whereabouts have proven false in the past.” Malik denied the two men are on Pakistani soil, but said any information to the contrary should be shared with Pakistani officials so that they could take “immediate action” to arrest the pair, CNN reported.— PTI