Bin Laden lair littered with bodies

In Malawa Valley, where locals said Osama bin Laden had built his home, nothing remained but the remains of a Soviet-era tank and a few shattered trees which had marked out the master terrorist's compound.

Bin Laden's home, built into the hillside using Stone Age technology, had been bombed back to earth. Vast craters from US explosives had replaced what had been his mountain lair.

On the other side of a brook on the valley floor we found the caves which had made Tora Bora and Malawa evil legends around the world. Their entrances were just wide enough for a man to pass through into the gloom beyond. Tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition were neatly stacked in tin boxes.

In other caves there was bedding and blankets, but the Mujahideen were reluctant to allow close inspection because of booby traps hidden amid such high explosives could tear away the hillside.

Given the vast amount of ammunition, more than enough to supply a brigade of infantry, what was baffling was the tiny level of casualties among al Qaeda fighters - raising the question as to whether the battle for Tora Bora and Malawa had been a deliberate decoy to focus attention on this remote area of Afghanistan's White Mountains while Bin Laden made his escape elsewhere. On the hill above what the Mujahideen said was Bin Laden's mountain home, four Chechens lay dead - two killed during the fighting, the others injured and later executed.

A few other corpses lay scattered across this hilly battlefield, but it was difficult to explain how so much noise and drama had been created by so few of Bin Laden's men.