A Pakistan official said Friday two sons of Osama bin Laden were wounded and possibly arrested by U.S. and Afghan troops in Afghanistan, but Washington disputed the report as did local officials and U.S. military in Afghanistan. Sardar Sanaullah Zehri, home minister of the western Pakistani province of Baluchistan, also said nine-suspected al Qaeda men were killed in the operation.

But White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said, "We have no information to substantiate that report."

A U.S. official who asked to remain anonymous said: "It's not true."

Abdul Karim Barawi, governor of the Afghan province of Nimroz, where the action was reported to have taken place on Thursday, also denied any arrests had been made.

A spokesman for the U.S. military in Afghanistan denied U.S. troops were in the area and said it had no information about the capture of sons of the al Qaeda leader Washington blames for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

The action was reported to have taken place in Ribat, a remote desert region that has long served as a route for smugglers and drug dealers and straddles the border with Pakistan and Iran about 560 miles southwest of Kabul.

Friday's reports follow the arrest last weekend of suspected Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, which raised hopes interrogators could get leads on bin Laden's whereabouts.

The world's most wanted man -- said to have had 13 children in 1998 -- has evaded U.S. forces since a U.S. bombing campaign against al Qaeda and forces of the ousted Taliban government in Afghanistan in late 2001.

PHOTO CAPTION

Two sons of Osama bin Laden were wounded and possibly arrested in an operation by U.S. and Afghan troops in Afghanistan, which killed at least nine, suspected al Qaeda members, a Pakistan official said on March 7, 2003. But the governor of Nimroz, the Afghan province where the action was reported to have taken place, swiftly denied there had been any arrests, clouding an already confused picture. Bin Laden is shown in this November, 2001 file photo. (Daily Dawn/Re