Al Qaeda Organization

The top U.S. military officer on Friday described the airstrike that killed a leading Al Qaeda commander in Pakistan as an important victory, but he refused to say whether the U.S. government had anything to do with it. "The strike was a very important one, it was a very lethal one," Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon news conference. He brushed aside questions about any role the Pentagon may have played.

After a U.S. airstrike leveled a small compound in Pakistan's lawless tribal regions in January 2006, President Pervez Musharraf and his intelligence officials announced that several senior Al Qaeda operatives had been killed, and that the top prize was an elusive Egyptian who was believed to be a chemical weapons expert. But current and former U.S.

The death of Abu Laith al Libi, a Libyan Al Qaeda chief, has cast a spotlight on the rise of Libyan militants in a network dominated by Egyptians and Saudis, Western anti-terrorism investigators say. Al Libi was killed last week in an American missile strike on a hide-out in Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan, officials say. In addition to overseeing a paramilitary campaign in Afghanistan, Al Libi had become a top figure in a propaganda barrage on the Internet, according to experts.

The three boys in black hoods and green T-shirts hold Kalashnikov assault rifles as the youngest shouts to the camera in a pre-pubescent voice, "Fight them and God will torture them through your hands." The videotape, found during a U.S. military raid Dec. 4 in Diyala province, also shows about 20 boys in dark blue sports jerseys jumping walls and storming houses.

Gen. James T. Conway, commandant of the Marine Corps, said Monday he was confident the militant group Al Qaeda in Iraq had been defeated here in western Iraq but that he was disappointed the central government in Baghdad had not done more to reconcile with the region and begin providing essential services. Conway, on a whirlwind tour of sprawling Anbar province, declined to say whether he would recommend to Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S.

U.S., Afghan and Pakistani officers Saturday opened the first of six joint military intelligence centers planned along the Afghan-Pakistan border. The centers represent the latest American efforts to get Afghanistan and Pakistan to coordinate in the fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The centers are to be staffed by about 20 personnel from the three countries. Maj. Gen. David Rodriguez, the commander of U.S.

If Al Qaeda strikes the West in the coming months, it's likely the mastermind will be a stocky Egyptian explosives expert with two missing fingers. His alias is Abu Ubaida al Masri. Hardly anyone has heard of him outside a select circle of anti-terrorism officials and Islamic militants. But as chief of external operations for Al Qaeda, investigators say, he has one of the most dangerous -- and endangered -- jobs in international terrorism.

Saudi Arabia remains the world's leading source of money for Al Qaeda and other extremist networks and has failed to take key steps requested by U.S. officials to stem the flow, the Bush administration's top financial counter-terrorism official said Tuesday. Stuart A.

Al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman Zawahiri denied Wednesday that the terrorist network had killed innocent people, but also said any such deaths were unintentional -- or necessary. His comments came in a 90-minute audio response billed as the first installment of answers to more than 900 questions submitted online.

Abu Ubaida al Masri, a suspected mastermind of Al Qaeda plots including the London transportation bombings of 2005, has died of an infectious disease in Pakistan, Western anti-terrorism officials said Wednesday. The Egyptian militant is thought to have died of hepatitis C, a U.S. anti-terrorism official said.