Baghdad: Insurgents struck cities across Iraq on Monday with car bombs, suicide attacks and gun battles, killing more than 70 people in worsening sectarian violence.
No group claimed responsibility for the day-long attacks, most of them in northern Iraq, but officials blame much of the violence that has killed nearly 2,000 people since April on Sunni Islamist insurgents linked to al Qaeda's local wing.
The bloodshed has accompanied rising political tensions between Iraq's majority Shi'ite leaders and the Sunni community, who believe they have been marginalised since the fall of Saddam Hussein after the 2003 US-led invasion.
Monday's attacks earlier targeted markets in two northern Iraqi towns. But later insurgents hit at security forces, including an assault involving suicide bombers and rockets on police headquarters in the northern city of Mosul that killed 24, many of them police and soldiers....
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06:10 AM, Jun 11, 2013
Baghdad: Iraq has captured a suspected al Qaeda cell that planned to produce chemical poisons such as mustard gas to attack Iraqi forces and to ship overseas for attacks on Europe and the United States, the government said on Saturday. The announcement was made as investigators look into allegations over the use of sarin nerve gas in next-door Syria where rebels and President Bashar al-Assad's forces have blamed each other...
07:38 PM, Jun 02, 2013
Dakar: After years of trying to discipline him, the leaders of al Qaida's North African branch sent one final letter to their most difficult employee. In page after scathing page, they described how he didn't answer his phone when they called, failed to turn in his expense reports, ignored meetings and refused time and again to carry out orders. Most of all, they claimed he had failed to carry out...
08:14 PM, May 31, 2013
Pakistan: Pakistani Taliban terrorists have chosen a new deputy commander to replace their previous second-in-command who was killed in a US drone strike in the North Waziristan region, sources in the terrorist group said on Thursday. The previous deputy commander, Wali-ur-Rehman, was killed in an attack by a missile-firing US drone aircraft in the terrorist stronghold of North Waziristan, on northwest Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, on Wednesday, Pakistani security officials...
04:55 PM, May 30, 2013
Islamabad: A US drone attack killed at least six suspected terrorists in Pakistan's lawless North Waziristan tribal region on Wednesday, the first such strike since the country's General Elections and the announcement of a new policy for the use of the CIA-operated spy planes by President Barack Obama. The spy plane targeted a house in Chashma Pul area of Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan Agency, early on Wednesday...
05:22 PM, May 29, 2013
Bhagdad: More than 70 people were killed in a wave of bombings in markets in Shi'ite neighbourhoods across Baghdad on Monday in worsening sectarian violence in Iraq. No group claimed responsibilty for the blasts. But Sunni Muslim Islamist insurgents and al-Qaeda's Iraqi wing have increased attacks since the beginning of 2013 and often target Shi'ite districts. More than a dozen blasts tore into markets and shopping areas in districts across...
06:07 AM, May 28, 2013
Baghdad: Eleven car bombs exploded in and around Baghdad, mostly in Shi'ite neighborhoods, killing 47 people and wounding more than 145 on Monday. No group has claimed responsibility for the blasts. But Sunni Muslim Islamist insurgents and al-Qaeda's Iraqi wing have increased attacks since the beginning of the year and often target Shi'ite districts. More than a dozen blasts tore into markets and shopping areas in districts across the Iraqi...
10:48 PM, May 27, 2013
Washington: A federal appeals court on Tuesday backed the US government's decision not to release photos and video taken of Osama bin Laden during and after a raid in which the terrorist leader was killed by US commandos. The three-judge panel of the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia turned down an appeal from Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, which had filed a Freedom of...
10:46 PM, May 21, 2013
Washington: A purported new issue of an English-language al Qaeda magazine, linked to the Boston terrorist attacks, has been posted on the web but its contents were hacked. The "Inspire" magazine, produced by al Qaeda's Yemeni affiliate - al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which regularly includes how-to instructions for followers to carry out terrorist attacks in the West - has received significant scrutiny in recent weeks. Investigators believe that...
05:42 PM, May 17, 2013
Washington: In an unusual move, US Justice Department secretly obtained two months' of telephone records of journalists working for the Associated Press, an action termed by the global news wire as a "massive and unprecedented intrusion" into how it gathers the news. The Justice Department obtained secret records as part of a year-long investigation into the disclosure of classified information about a failed al-Qaeda plot in 2012. The Associated Press,...
10:56 AM, May 14, 2013
Islamabad: Former premier Yousuf Raza Gilani's son Ali Haider, kidnapped by gunmen while campaigning for Pakistan's landmark elections, had received threats from the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Sipah-e-Sahaba. Though no group has claimed responsibility for the abduction, Gilani and other members of his family told The Express Tribune that Ali Haider had been receiving "death and kidnapping threats" from the LeJ and Sipah-e-Sahaba. Ali Haider, 27, was kidnapped on Thursday while...
12:13 PM, May 10, 2013
Baghdad: At least 27 people were killed and dozens more wounded on Thursday when a suicide bomber blew himself up inside a Baghdad cafe popular with teenagers using the Internet, police and hospital officials said. Police and witnesses said emergency workers were still pulling out victims trapped when the blast collapsed part of the building in the west of the Iraqi capital. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing,...
02:36 AM, Apr 19, 2013
Mogadishu: At least 19 people were killed in the Somali capital on Sunday in suicide bombings and assaults by al Shabaab militants linked to al Qaeda, breaking a fragile return to peace in Mogadishu. A bomb exploded outside law courts in the city as gunmen stormed the compound. Security forces then arrived and battled the fighters inside. Later, a bomb exploded near an African Union and Turkish Red Crescent convoy...
07:20 AM, Apr 15, 2013
New York: Osama bin Laden's son-in-law, charged in New York last month with conspiring to kill American nationals, will face trial in January next year, a US judge has ruled. Sulaiman Abu Ghaith had appeared with bin Laden and his then-deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri after the 9/11 attacks and spoke on behalf of al Qaeda and in support of its mission. He had warned that 9/11 type attacks would continue. US...
10:49 PM, Apr 10, 2013
New York: A federal trial for a son-in-law of Osama bin Laden accused of conspiring to kill Americans will begin in January 2014 in Manhattan, a judge ruled on Tuesday. Suleiman Abu Ghaith, who acted as an al Qaeda spokesman in videos, is one of the highest-ranking al Qaeda figures to face trial in the United States for crimes related to the September 11 attacks. He was captured in Jordan...
06:53 AM, Apr 10, 2013
A young Manipuri, serving as a Lieutenant in the British Royal Maritime Auxiliary Service, Khwairakpam Robin Singh, will receive the Star of Gallantry and the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross from the United Kingdom, for his exceptional bravery in week long fierce battle against the Al Qaeda in interior Afghanistan in 2011. The 27-year-old lead scout was part of a 47 member special force team, including 40 commandos, called in as a...
07:58 AM, Mar 25, 2013
The al Qaeda-linked North African warlord Abou Zeid was killed in combat with French troops in Mali in February, France said on Saturday, ending weeks of uncertainty about whether one of the group's leading commanders was dead. ...
09:00 PM, Mar 23, 2013
A series of coordinated car bombs and blasts hit Shi'ite districts across Baghdad and south of the Iraqi capital on Tuesday, killing at least 25 people on the tenth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion. ...
02:20 PM, Mar 19, 2013
Security forces in the Afghan capital have defused a truck bomb packed with nearly eight tonnes of explosives, the biggest of its kind discovered in the country, the spy agency said on Friday amid heightened security. Intelligence forces discovered the explosives in eastern Kabul, wired and ready for detonation, security officials said. ...
05:56 PM, Mar 15, 2013
Seven foreign hostages kidnapped last month by a Nigerian Islamist group from a construction company compound have been killed, the Italian and Greek foreign ministries said on Sunday. The al Qaeda-affiliated group Ansaru announced on Saturday that it had killed the hostages seized on February 7 in the northern state of Bauchi because of attempts by Nigerian and British forces to free them. ...
02:55 PM, Mar 11, 2013
