Al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, travelled to Bulgaria among other countries on Islamic Jihad business and under an assumed name, Birmingham Post-Herald claims.

According to the article Zawahiri visited Switzerland, Bosnia, Bulgaria and Dagestan, a Russian province and even made surreptitious fund-raising swings through Texas, California and New York in the 1990s.

In 1998, Zawahiri and bin Laden officially aligned, and al-Qaeda was born.

In a separate development Ayman al-Zawahiri biographer, Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir, announced that Zawahiri, visited New Zealand and Australia in 1996 to recruit militants.

In those days, in early 1996, he was on a mission to organise his network all over the world, Mir said.

The claims come as Pakistani officials said the previous day they might have cornered al-Zawahiri in a remote area near the Afghan border after two days of intense fighting.

On Saturday Pakistan's military arrested more than 100 suspects in a five-day assault on militants holed up in mud fortresses along the border where al-Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al Zawahri is believed trapped.

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