Al Qaeda

SANA'A, Yemen - Nearly 60 suspected al-Qaeda militants tunneled their way out of a Yemeni prison in the lawless south Wednesday, deepening the chaos of a nation where protesters are trying to topple the autocratic regime. The escape from the Mukalla prison in Hadramawt province is the latest sign that Islamic militants are seizing on the mayhem to operate more freely, something the United States fears will become an increasing international threat if the impoverished nation grows even more unstable.

If the term war on terror ever meant anything, it meant war against those directly responsible for the horrors of 9/11. In October 2001, the United States began that war in Afghanistan. We drove the Taliban from power. Militants (including al-Qaeda) fled across the border into mountainous, tribal regions of Pakistan. That's where the enemy remains. We never chased down Osama bin Laden. In the rubble of the World Trade Center, the president vowed that the terrorists would "hear all of us soon," but the job remains unfinished.

Andy Borowitz is a humorist, television personality and film actor In a bold move to undermine the international terror network, President Bush today named former deputy defense secretary and World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz to be the new president of al-Qaeda. Wolfowitz, who has no experience running an international terror organization, struck many Washington insiders as an unlikely choice for the al-Qaeda job. But in a White House ceremony introducing his nominee for the top terror post, Bush indicated that Wolfowitz's role in planning the war in Iraq and bringing scandal to the World Bank showed that he was "just the man" to bring chaos and disorder to al-Qaeda.

German police yesterday arrested two suspected al-Qaeda members, accusing them of planning suicide attacks in Iraq and trying to purchase uranium from a dealer in Luxembourg. German prosecutor Kay Nehm said the two arrests came after months of investigation. He described one of the suspects, Ibrahim Mohamed K., 29, a German citizen with an Iraqi background, as a high-ranking member of al-Qaeda in charge of recruiting suicide bombers and planning attacks from Europe. Mohamed K., whose last name was not released, is suspected of trying to arrange purchase of material for a nuclear bomb.

SANAA, Yemen - An al-Qaeda attack on a Yemeni army post in the south set off clashes that left 64 people dead Monday and prompted local civilians to take up arms alongside the military to beat back the militants, said army officials and residents. The dawn attack was the latest in a series of bloody battles in recent months that mark an escalation in al-Qaeda's efforts to expand its control around a swath of land it seized last year. The group took advantage of the country's political turmoil to overrun cities and towns in southern Yemen.

PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN - A U.S. drone strike has killed a senior al Qaeda leader in Pakistan's tribal region near the Afghan border, Pakistani intelligence officials said, in the latest blow to the Islamic militant network. Sheik Khalid bin Abdel Rehman al-Hussainan, who was also known as Abu Zaid al-Kuwaiti, was killed when missiles slammed into a house Thursday near Mir Ali, one of the main towns in the North Waziristan tribal area, the officials said. Al-Kuwaiti appeared in many videos released by al Qaeda's media wing, Al-Sahab, and was presented as a religious scholar for the group.

Despite a worldwide crackdown and the arrests of many of its leaders, al-Qaeda remains a deadly terrorist force and appears to be thriving in Saudi Arabia, where it is the chief suspect in Monday's bombing attacks in Riyadh. While Bush administration officials credit the Saudi government with aggressively pursuing al-Qaeda since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, possibly hundreds of al-Qaeda members have escaped detection and maintain active cells throughout the desert kingdom, U.S. officials and terrorism experts say. The group's Saudi operatives, echoing the message of their fugitive Saudi-born leader, Osama bin Laden, are winning recruits from a growing sector of impoverished young men by decrying the opulence of the ruling monarchy and the government's close ties with the United States.

SANAA, Yemen - Yemeni troops backed by armed tribesmen routed al-Qaeda on Tuesday from two southern strongholds that the terror network had held for more than a year. It was the most significant victory so far in a monthlong offensive against a local franchise that has tried time and again to bomb U.S.-bound planes. The military campaign, orchestrated by U.S. military advisers and bankrolled by neighboring Saudi Arabia, has left al-Qaeda's dangerous Yemen branch on the run. The group remained in control of only a handful of towns, with hundreds of its members scattered in the mountains, valleys, and vast desert of the Arab world's most impoverished country.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - A U.S. drone strike has killed a senior al-Qaeda leader in Pakistan's tribal region near the Afghan border, Pakistani intelligence officials said, in the latest blow to the Islamic militant network. Sheikh Khalid bin Abdel Rehman al-Hussainan, who was also known as Abu Zaid al-Kuwaiti, was killed when missiles slammed into a house Thursday near Mir Ali, one of the main towns in the North Waziristan tribal area, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

SAN'A, Yemen - Sneaking across the desert behind army lines, al-Qaeda insurgents launched a surprise attack against military bases in southern Yemen, killing 107 soldiers and capturing heavy weapons they later used to kill more troops, officials said Monday. Military officials said at least 32 of the insurgents were killed in Sunday's fighting in Abyan province and scores wounded on both sides. Medical officials confirmed the numbers of dead. They said the poor services in local hospitals accounted for the deaths of many soldiers who suffered serious wounds who could have survived had they been given better care.

RECENTLY, in response to the hat trick of scandals that the White House has scored over the past few days, some liberal commentators have tried to distance President Obama from at least two of them. It's not surprising that the Fourth Estate is up in arms that a Holder-led Department of Justice snooped into the private lives of their Associated Press colleagues, so you can't expect them to carry Barry's water on that one. But the other two scandals that have either intensified (Benghazi)

SAN'A, Yemen - The president of Yemen on Thursday warned that the al-Qaeda branch in the country was expanding and using assassinations and abductions of foreigners as a way to challenge the central authority. President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi issued his warning during a closed session of the National Dialogue, which brings political, religious, and other leaders together to decide on the country's political system before writing a constitution. The official SABA news agency said Hadi held an "exceptional" meeting, but offered few details on the president's remarks about security in the county.

PARIS - An Algeria-based al-Qaeda offshoot said in an online video on Tuesday that Muslims have an obligation to attack French interests around the world because of France's military intervention in Mali. In a message posted on YouTube, Abou Obeida Youssef Al-Annabi, a notable in the al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb group, or AQIM, said the "crusade" led by France in Mali makes its interests "legitimate targets. " French President Francois Hollande said he takes the threat seriously.

TORONTO - Two men were arrested and charged with plotting a terrorist attack against a Canadian passenger train with support from al Qaeda elements in Iran, police said Monday. The case bolstered allegations by some governments and experts of a relationship of convenience between Shiite-led Iran and the predominantly Sunni Arab terrorist network. Chiheb Esseghaier, 30, and Raed Jaser, 35, had "direction and guidance" from al Qaeda members in Iran, though there was no reason to think the planned attacks were state-sponsored, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Assistant Commissioner James Malizia said.

THIS [the Boston Marathon bombing] makes me sick. Aren't we tired of these reprehensible people? Someone has hurt us again. Our country has been attacked again. Even if it proves to be a single person or a group of people attacking us in remembrance of other violent attacks, they must be dealt with and punished immediately. We are too politically correct in the way we handle these terrorists. I say they must be tortured to find out the truth of who they are, who they work for and what will come next.

NAIROBI, Kenya - The U.S. official who oversees American efforts to counter al-Qaeda and other militants in the online battlefield keeps a quote on his desk from a "Most Wanted" jihadi from America's South. The Alabama native wrote that "the war of narratives has become even more important than the war of navies, napalm and knives. " "I keep that on my desk because that is true," Alberto Fernandez, the top official at the State Department's Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications, told the Associated Press.

CAIRO - The deputy leader of al-Qaeda in Yemen slammed Saudi Arabia's policy of allowing the United States to launch deadly drone strikes from bases in the kingdom, calling on Saudis, in a new audio message released Wednesday, to revolt against the ruling family. Saeed al-Shihri's statement appeared to back up al-Qaeda denials this week that he was killed in a drone attack. The Saudi national was reported killed by a U.S. drone strike earlier this year by Yemeni security officials, based on alleged Saudi intelligence.

DOHA, Qatar - Afghan President Hamid Karzai met with the emir of Qatar in Doha on Sunday to discuss the possible opening of a Taliban office in Qatar. The move could foster peace negotiations with the Islamic fundamentalist movement in a bid to stem violence as foreign combat forces prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. The Qatar News Agency said Karzai met with the emir, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, and other senior government officials. He also held talks with Qatar's ambassador to Pakistan during a tour of an Islamic art museum in Doha.

BAGHDAD - An al-Qaeda in Iraq front group claimed responsibility Wednesday for bloody attacks that killed 65 people across the country a day earlier, underscoring the terror group's potency a decade after the U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein. On an extremist website, the Islamic State of Iraq said it unleashed the car bombs and other explosions to avenge the executions and "massacres" of convicted Sunni inmates in Iraqi prisons. It made no mention of the start of the war, but the claim of responsibility came 10 years after the U.S.-led war began March 20, 2003, with an air strike on Dora Farms in southern Baghdad in a failed attempt to kill Hussein.

WASHINGTON - With the expulsion of a senior al-Qaeda official, Iran appears to be signaling a crackdown on the terrorist group that has long sought refuge within its borders, even as Tehran allows al-Qaeda operatives safe transit to Afghanistan, U.S. officials say. Iran's ouster of Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, a former al-Qaeda spokesman and a son-in-law of Osama bin Laden now held in the United States, marked at least the third time in the last year that...