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Asharq Al-Awsat said the 17-year-old daughter, Eman, slipped away from guards and fled to the Saudi Embassy nearly a month ago. The embassy's charge d'affaires, Fouad al-Qassas, confirmed to the paper that she has been at the mission for 25 days and that there were diplomatic efforts with the Iranians to get her out of the country.

Another bin Laden son, Abdullah, who lives in Saudi Arabia, told the Arab TV news network Al-Jazeera in an interview aired this week that Eman telephoned him after she eluded guards who were taking her on a shopping trip in Tehran.

Osama bin Laden reportedly has 19 children by several wives. He took at least one of his wives and their children with him to Afghanistan in the late 1990s after he was thrown out of his previous refuge, Sudan. They fled when the U.S-led war erupted, including the group that tried to escape through Iran.

His son Omar told Asharq Al-Awsat that the family had not known for certain the fate of the siblings that fled through Iran until Eman's escape. "Until four weeks ago, we did not know where they were," said the 28-year-old Omar, who is married to a British woman and has lived in Egypt and the Gulf. He said eight other bin Laden children live in Saudi Arabia and Syria.