 Pentagon documents suggest bin Laden escaped at Tora Bora.In an October 2004 opinion article in "The New York Times", General Tommy Franks, who was the general commander of U.S forces in Afghanistan at the time, wrote,

Many enemy fighters fled through the rough terrain and into tribal areas of Pakistan to the south and east.Allied forces estimated that around 200 of the al-Qaeda fighters were killed during the battle, along with an unknown number of anti-Taliban tribal fighters.