Six days into the largest Pakistani operation against Al Qaeda remnants inside its borders, it is not clear what - or who - has been netted in the unprecedented campaign.

Sunday, Pakistani forces reportedly agreed to a temporary cease-fire, allowing a 22-member tribal council to negotiate a handover of the surrounded fighters.

But Pakistani and US officials have backed off from the claim that Osama bin Laden's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri is the "high-value target" surrounded by the 7,000-strong Pakistani deployment. They say another important jihadist could be holed up in the compound: Qari Tahir Yaldash, a founding member of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) who has allied his organization with Al Qaeda.

Either way, officials and experts say, it is part of the joint US- Pakistani military strategy to remove every potential site Al Qaeda and Taliban remnants use to organize, train, recruit, plan, and control their activities. And if they catch the top leaders in their net, all the better.

"Manhunts are not things that militaries do well," Gen. John Abizaid, US commander over the region, told a Senate committee earlier this month. "What we do well is put pressure on groups and organizations, and we are continuing to put lots of pressure on Al Qaeda and the Taliban in areas along the border that does not allow them to have a sanctuary from which they can plan new attacks against the US."

Pakistan's federally administered tribal areas are a little larger than the state of Texas. The region hosts some of the world's highest mountain ranges, and independent tribal groups who battled against Soviet and US troops in Afghanistan. It's a no man's land. Like Afghanistan in the 1990s, officials say it has become a haven to Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

In fact, the fighting that continued into Sunday is concentrated in about a 30 square mile area near the city of Wana, around the villages of Shin Warsak, Daza Gundai, Kallu Shah, Ghaw Khawa, and Khari Kot.

It is not clear, however, how many Al Qaeda and Taliban militants have congregated in the area. And it's not known how many of them have "melted" into the local population, or indeed originally came from here. Locals say, for example, that some 10,000 tribesmen from Wana alone participated in the decades-long war in Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials say some 400 to 500 Al Qaeda militants are engaged in the fighting. Local tribal sources say the foreign militants also have been recruiting and training some 2,500 tribesmen, which locals call the Men of Al Qaeda.

"They are professional fighters with tremendous patience," says Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain, who is in charge of the Pakistani military operation.

The Pakistani military launched the operation - helicopter gunships striking the fortress-like mud houses from the air, while thousands of ground forces encircled the five villages - in the areas that are ruled by the four most notorious, local tribal leaders known to sympathize with Al Qaeda: Noor-ul Islam, Naik Mohammad, Mohammad Sharif, and Maulvi Abbas.

The four belong to the Yar Gul Khel, a subgroup of the ZaliKhel clan of Ahmed Zai Wazir tribe, which fought against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and is believed to be leading the resistance to the Pakistani military onslaught.

"Mujahideen are divided in groups and fighting with guerrilla warfare tactics," says tribesman Mohammad Niaz Khan, who fled from the fighting. "They have automatic weapons, hand grenades, and explosives strapped to their bodies."

Thousands of villagers, like Mr. Khan, are trying to escape - with children, chickens, and goats - in cars, trucks, and donkey carts, as thousands more are trapped in the area. "For us, the sky and earth are both spitting fire," says villager Dilawar Khan, sitting next to his four injured children at a local hospital. "From the sky, helicopters are targeting us, and from the ground mujahideen are firing. We poor tribesmen are sandwiched between Al Qaeda and Pakistani forces."

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