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A teenager in Philadelphia has been arrested and charged for plotting what authorities have called a “catastrophic terrorist attack.” The 17-year-old boy was arrested by SWAT forces on August 11, following an investigation FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force. The teen is accused of being in contact with Katibat al Tawhid wal Jihad, an extremist Islamist group affiliated with Al Qaeda. Katibat al Tawhid wal Jihad was officially designated as a terrorist organization by the US State Department in 2022. He received instructions from the group on the construction of IEDs and purchased materials used to make explosives as well as...

A senior Al-Qaeda leader was killed in a US drone strike in Syria, the Pentagon said Friday, according to AFP. The strike came two days after a base in southern Syria, used by the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group, was assaulted. "A US air strike today in northwest Syria killed senior Al-Qaeda leader Abdul Hamid al-Matar," said Central Command spokesman Army Major John Rigsbee in a statement. There were no other known casualties from the strike, he said, adding it was conducted using an MQ-9 aircraft. ......

Al Qaeda's Syria affiliate said on Saturday it would prosecute members involved in an shoot-out in northwest Idlib province that killed at least 20 members of the country's Druze minority. In an official statement published on Twitter, Nusra Front sought to allay fears of further attacks on minorities, saying that some of its members acted "in clear violation of the leadership's views," reports AFP. On Thursday, residents of the village of Qalb Lawzah protested after a Tunisian Nusra leader tried to seize a Druze man's home, accusing him of being loyal to the Syrian regime, the Syrian Observatory for Human...

Senior Al-Qaeda leader Ayed al-Shabwani was killed in fighting in Yemen this week, officials in Yemen announced Thursday. He had been on the government's “wanted” list for some time. Shabwani was among the leaders of an uprising in Yemen aimed at ousting the government and seizing control of the country in the name of Al-Qaeda and Islamist rule. The uprising has so far succeeded in creating an army and establishing its own capital in the southeast of the country. Shabwani was believed to have been killed in an airstrike in January, but was later found to have survived. He had...

KABUL – Hundreds of insurgents armed with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades stormed a pair of remote outposts near the Pakistan border, killing eight U.S. soldiers and capturing more than 20 Afghan security troops in the deadliest assault against U.S. forces in more than a year, military officials said Sunday. The fierce gunbattle, which erupted at dawn Saturday in the Kamdesh district of mountainous Nuristan province and raged throughout the day, is likely to fuel the debate in Washington over the direction of the troubled eight-year war. It was the heaviest U.S. loss of life in a single battle since...

The US has sought "permission" of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf to bomb the tribal areas of Waziristan and Northern Areas, where 10,000 Al-Qaeda terrorists are reported to have taken sanctuary, well informed sources have said. US officials, who sounded Musharraf, were reported to have specifically identified the Mahsoud and Khattak tribes as those providing sanctuary to the Al-Qaeda men who had fled Afghanistan to escape the manhunt by US troops. The sources said the Pakistani military establishment was concerned about the US move, because it felt the move could lead to a revolt by some 100,000 Mahsoud and Khattak soldiers...

Twenty-eight Pakistani nationals were arrested in the Italian city of Naples with explosives and a map of the town where NATO's southern headquarters is located, court sources said here on Friday. Police said the 28, arrested on Thursday as they were carrying out an anti-drugs sweep, were part of a terrorist "sleeper cell" that was planning an attack. They did not give further details on the group's plan. But they said the detainees had detonators in their apartment as well as a kilogram of unidentified explosives and a number of maps, including one for the town of Bagnoli, outside Naples,...

Bali bomb blast victim Christian Cronje is back in Cape Town as one of the few lucky survivors of the Bali blasts - but his dream holiday has been replaced by a nightmare. At the N1 City Hospital on Tuesday the 27-year-old chartered accountant recalled the horrific events that are etched forever in his memory. He was dancing in one of the packed tourist bars on Kuta Beach when the bomb exploded. One of his injuries gives an inkling of the power of the explosion: bone shards of another victim penetrated his arm. "I had arrived in Kuta at about...

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - One of six people indicted on terrorism charges considered attacking synagogues or Jewish schools on American soil, but then reconsidered, federal prosecutors said. Assistant U.S. Attorney David Atkinson said Friday that Jeffrey Leon Battle told an FBI informant he wanted to avenge Muslims killed overseas by shooting Jews in America. ``Mr. Battle indicates that he considered engaging in some kind of violent episode - perhaps against a synagogue or a school - in which he contemplates injuring numerous people,'' Atkinson said. In a conversation with the unnamed informant last spring, Battle said that after the Sept....