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Taliban leader 'survived direct hits'

Omar: narrow escape

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) -- The leader of Afghanistan's Taliban movement, Mullah Mohammad Omar, reportedly survived a direct U.S. missile strike on his home and fled in the early stages of the U.S. bombing raids on the country.

The fugitive's driver said on Monday that Omar had escaped a second, pinpoint attack on the cab a little more than an hour after the strike on his home.

"The missile struck and all of (Omar's) family ran outside in panic, and Mullah Omar asked me to get a taxi," Mohammed Rahim, 35, told Reuters news agency.

Mullah Omar, and his ally, Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, top Washington's most wanted list. Their whereabouts are not known.

The leader of the strict Islamic movement that ruled Afghanistan for six years got into Rahim's vehicle along with his second wife and a number of his children.

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"I was really scared. He told me to go to Sangisar. This was at night -- the missile hit the house at 8:55 p.m. (1625 GMT)," Rahim said.

The journey took about an hour. Sangisar is in Maiwand district, west of Kandahar.

Other associates of the Taliban leader have said Mullah Omar fled the night before the first U.S. bombing directed at his homes -- one in Kandahar city, the other on western outskirts.

Rahim said he was not sure about the casualties in the attack on the larger and newer house, but he had heard that Mullah Omar's stepfather, who is also his uncle, had been killed.

Residents fleeing Kandahar said at the time that Mullah Omar's 10-year-old son was also killed in the airstrike on his house in Sangisar.

Taxi destroyed

The taxi belonged to Rahim. He said Omar did not want to use one of his own vehicles -- including black Lexus saloons and a white Toyota Land Cruiser with tinted windows -- because they might be conspicuous.

Even so, minutes after arrival at Sangisar, Rahim's taxi was blown to pieces by another U.S. projectile. It was a second narrow escape for Mullah Omar.

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By that time, everyone was out of the car. Omar and his second wife and children had hurried off on foot in the direction of the home of the second wife's father.

Rahim said he ran off in another direction. The village was not damaged in the U.S. attack, he said. It was a pinpoint strike on the taxi.

That was the last Rahim saw of Mullah Omar. The driver stayed a week in Sangisar and then returned to Kandahar.

Other reports, from servants and warlords, say Mullah Omar later returned alone to the southern city, the Taliban's last bastion, and could be seen on the back of a motorcycle with a Kalashnikov rifle, moving from place to place.

As the Taliban stronghold fell -- battered by U.S. bombers and besieged by anti-Taliban forces on the ground -- Mullah Omar slipped away in the night and is still on the run.

Bin Laden has also vanished. The United States has pledged to track him down for his alleged role in the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington that killed about 3,000 people.

'A good person'

Rahim said he first met Mullah Omar in Sangisar, possibly in 1994 as the fundamentalist movement took shape.

He joined the Taliban as a driver. He said he supported the organization because it was taking action against looters and armed robbers infesting roads and towns throughout the south.

"Mullah Omar was generally good to those who worked for him -- in my opinion, he was a good person. He didn't say anything bad to anyone that I know of," Rahim said.

Before September 11, Mullah Omar spent much of his time at shrines and cemeteries of the martyred -- those killed in war against the Taliban's enemies.

"He wasn't going out much after the September 11 incident," Rahim said.

Mullah Omar had one passion -- wrestling. In Pashtun areas of Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan, it takes the form of a traditional sport in which men, stripped to the waist, grab each other with both arms around the ribs, hands locked together, and try to throw their opponent to the ground.

It was one of the few recreations the Taliban did not ban -- unlike listening to the radio, playing music, dancing, singing or watching television.

"He used to go a lot to the gheijj (Pashtun wrestling), and he was really fond of it," Rahim said.