Al Qaeda

Half of US combat troops home within one year: Obama

US President Barack Obama said Tuesday he will bring home within a year about half of the 66,000 US troops now in Afghanistan, shrinking the force to the size he found it when he entered the White House vowing to reinvigorate a stalemated war. ...  

Obama calls al Qaeda 'shadow of former self'

US President Barack Obama says al Qaeda is a "shadow of its former self," and does not pose the kind of threat to America that requires tens of thousands of US troops to fight abroad. ...  

Al Qaeda planning attack on US consulate: Thailand

Thailand has beefed up security at the US consulate in the northern province city of Chiang Mai after receiving information that al Qaeda and Salafist terrorists were planning to launch a three-pronged attack on it this month. ...  

I shot Osama bin Laden three times, reveals US commando

Nearly two years after the daring US commando raid that killed the 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, a US Navy SEAL who pulled the trigger has recounted his role for the first time. Breaking his silence on the May 2011 raid on Laden's hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, the commando told the Esquire magazine in an interview published Monday that he shot the Al-Qaeda leader three times. ...  

PM's daughter Amrit Singh blows the whistle on CIA

Pakistani spy agency ISI's detention facilities in Karachi and elsewhere were used as an initial detention and interrogation point by the CIA during America's war on al Qaeda which was supported by over 50 countries following 9/11 attacks, a new report has claimed. ...  

Pak plans theme park in town where Osama was killed

Pakistan's Abbottabad town, where al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was killed in a US commando operation, will soon have an amusement park built at a cost of around $30 million, a British daily said. ...  

Yemen: Al Qaeda's No 2 succumbs to wounds

Al Qaida's No 2 in Yemen died of wounds sustained in a US drone attack in 2012 in southern Yemen, the country's official news agency and a security official said on Thursday. Saeed al-Shihri, a Saudi national who fought in Afghanistan and spent six years in the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, was wounded in a missile attack in the southern city of Saada on October 28, according to...  

'Al Qaeda continues to represent a threat to US'

Despite a relentless campaign against it, al Qaeda and its affiliates in different parts of the world continue to pose a threat to the US, the White House said on Wednesday. ...  

Algeria: Death toll climbs past 80 in siege in the Sahara

The death toll from the terrorist siege at a natural gas plant in the Sahara climbed past 80 on Sunday as Algerian forces searching the refinery for explosives found dozens more bodies, many so badly disfigured it was unclear whether they were hostages or militants, a security official said. ...  

Yemen: 13 al Qaeda-linked militants killed

More than 10 suspected al Qaeda operatives were killed by an explosion in a house in south Yemen where they were making bombs and at least three others died in a drone strike, tribal and official sources said on Sunday. A bomb ripped through a house in the province of al-Bayda on Saturday night, the state news agency Saba and a local official said. ...  

Algeria hostage crisis ends, 23 people killed

In a bloody finale, Algerian special forces stormed a natural gas complex in the Sahara desert on Saturday to end a standoff with Islamist extremists that left at least 23 hostages dead and killed all 32 militants involved, the Algerian government said. ...  

Algerian attack reminder of threat by al Qaeda: Obama

Condemning the terrorist attack in Algeria, US President Barack Obama has blamed terrorists for the tragedy and said attack is another reminder of the threat posed by al Qaeda and other violent extremist groups in North Africa. ...  

Mali Islamists counter attack, promise France long war

Al Qaeda-linked Islamist rebels launched a counteroffensive in Mali on January 14 after four days of French air strikes on their northern strongholds, seizing the central town of Diabaly and promising to drag France into a brutal Afghanistan-style war. France, which has poured hundreds of troops into the capital Bamako in recent days, carried out more air raids on January 14 in the vast desert area seized last year by...  

France bombs Islamist stronghold in north Mali

French fighter jets pounded an Islamist rebel stronghold deep in northern Mali on Sunday as Paris poured more troops into the capital Bamako, awaiting a West African force to dislodge al Qaeda-linked insurgents from the country's north. The attack on Gao, the largest city in the desert region controlled by the Islamist alliance, marked a decisive intensification on the third day of French air raids, striking at the heart of...  

Obama administration resists release of Osama photos

Even almost two years after the world's most wanted terrorist was slain by American special forces, President Barack Obama's administration is refusing to release photos of Osama bin Laden's dead body, warning that this would risk "grave damage" to national security. Though media outlets worldwide had made a clamor for 52 photographs taken during 'Operation Geronimo', the Obama administration has stoutly resisted warning that the images could excite an angry,...  

US State Dept made mistake over Benghazi: Senate report

The State Department made a "grievous mistake" in keeping the US mission in Benghazi open despite inadequate security and increasingly alarming threat assessments in the weeks before a deadly attack by militants, a Senate committee said on December 31. A report from the Senate Homeland Security Committee on the September 11 attacks on the US mission and a nearby CIA annex, in which the US ambassador to Libya and three...  

Al Qaeda carves out own country in Mali

Deep inside caves, in remote desert bases, in the escarpments and cliff faces of northern Mali, Islamic fighters are burrowing into the earth, erecting a formidable set of defenses to protect what has essentially become Al Qaeda's new country. ...  

Afghanistan: Suicide bomber kills three people at US base

A suicide bomber killed three people in an attack on a US base in Afghanistan on December 26, the same base that is believed to be used by the CIA and which a suicide bomber attacked three years ago killing seven CIA employees. The Afghan Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in the eastern town of Khost, saying they had sent a suicide bomber driving a van packed with explosives...  

'Core of al Qaeda degraded in South Asia'

Washington: The core of al Qaeda has seriously degraded in South Asia, a top American counter-terrorism official has said, noting that the US has removed 20 of its top 30 leaders. "In South Asia, al Qaeda's core has been seriously degraded. Without a doubt, Osama bin Laden's departure from the scene was the most important milestone in the fight against al Qaeda," Daniel Benjamin, the State Department's top counter-terrorism official...  

Zero Dark Thirty: Laden movie mired in controversy

New York: Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow could have made a testosterone-fueled shoot-'em-up Hollywood version of the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden. Instead, she and screenwriter Mark Boal turned 'Zero Dark Thirty' into a more complex look at the decade-long hunt for the al Qaeda leader, including a frank presentation of US torture and previously undisclosed details of the mission to hunt down the man behind the September 11...