Osama bin Laden may be traveling with a large caravan of people on foot and horseback who are being tracked electronically by the CIA and Pakistani army in the mountain areas of Pakistan between the borders of Iran and Afghanistan, according to a report by
ABC News.
Officials have cast a net around the caravan ? using electronic U.S. surveillance and planes with cameras that can see through darkness.
U.S. officials say they have closed the area to all other traffic and believe there's a high degree of probability bin Laden is in the caravan.
ABC News is reporting the hunt is the result of new leads provided by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Mohammed reportedly told investigators that bin Laden had met him in the mountainous regions of frontier areas near Baluchistan. Mohammed was captured last weekend in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. He is in U.S. custody.
ABC News, too, reported the major new search centered around the Baluchistan region. Leaflets are being dropped from airplanes reminding residents of the $25 million reward for bin Laden, according to the report.
There reportedly have been numerous sightings of bin Laden in the area on both sides of the Iran-Pakistan border. Mohammed has extensive family ties in the region.
"They definitely have him pinned down to a small area" said ABC News terrorism consultant Vince Cannistrano. "This will be a major operation."
U.S. officials told the news agency that bin Laden's location was pinpointed more than a week ago when he used a mobile phone to call his family. Satellites picked up the call.
The report also said bin Laden's son Saad was recently in Tehran.
Authorities believe information from Mohammed's cell phone confirms other data they have suggesting they are very close to finding the No. 1 most-wanted terrorist in the world.
Some U.S. officials believe it will be difficult to take bin Laden in alive.
"I always had this dream of seeing him in an orange prisoner's jumpsuit that said, 'Metropolitan Correctional Center' (in New York City), but I think he will want to shoot it out because he has scripted his own demise," Jack Cloonan, a recently retired FBI bin Laden investigator, told ABC News. "He wants to be a martyr."
Meanwhile, a Pakistani official announces two of bin Laden's sons have been nabbed in Afghanistan, according to the Associated Press.
Pakistan's provincial home minister Sanaullah Zehri told the Associated Press the pair were arrested during a joint operation involving U.S. forces in the Rabat region of Afghanistan.
Zehri said seven other al-Qaida men were killed in the raid.
According to the Associated Press, the arrested are Saad and Hamza bin Laden. They are believed to be two of the estimated 23 sons of bin Laden. Saad, 23, is said to be closely tied to the operations of the al-Qaida terror network.
The Pakistan Tribune, citing unnamed sources, reported yesterday on the arrest of nine al-Qaida suspects in a raid near the Afghan border – one of whom was thought to be bin Laden or his son.
U.S. counter-terrorism officials strongly dispute reports that bin Laden's sons were captured.
"It's not true," a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Agence France-Presse. "We have absolutely no information to substantiate that."
A U.S. official told an AP Radio reporter at the White House: "We, in fact, think it's wrong."