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Suicide Attack in Algeria Kills Dozens By Ricci Shryock Dakar 19 August 2008 Shryock report - Download (MP3) Shryock report - Listen (MP3) Algeria's Interior Ministry says a suicide car bombing in front of a police school near Algiers has killed more than 40 people and injured dozens more. Ricci Shryock has more from our West Africa regional bureau in Dakar. Gendarmes stand at the site of a suicide bomb attack in Issers, 60 kms east of Algiers, 19 Aug 2008 Young Algerians were waiting in line to register at the local police academy when a suicide car bomb exploded...

Pentagon Makes Fighting Extremism Top Priority Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon on Thursday officially named "the long war" against global extremism as its top priority and pledged to avert any conventional military threat from China or Russia through dialogue. The Defense Department, in a new national defense strategy, also emphasized the need to subordinate military operations to "soft power" initiatives to undermine Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social development in vulnerable corners of the world. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the change would help establish permanent institutional support for counterinsurgency skills...

Al-Qaeda Draws New Recruits Via Internet Al-Qaeda is using the Internet to recruit vulnerable young people to its terrorist network, according to a programme aired on Saudi Arabian TV late on Tuesday. Umm Osama, the founder of al-Qaeda's first women-only website, al-Khansa, joined several others on the programme to discuss how they renounced jihadist ideology. Among those who sought a response to this question was an imam from the Medina mosque, Saleh Ibn Awad al-Mudamsi, and the father of a young al-Qaeda suspect held in an Iraqi prison. Read More Qaeda Targets U.S. Oil Interests in North Africa U.S....

Algeria Muslim body slams Christian evangelistsSun 1 Jun 2008, 7:22 GMTALGIERS (Reuters) - Algeria hit back on Saturday at foreign accusations minority Christians are harassed, saying Protestant evangelicals were secretly trying to divide Algerians to colonise the mainly Muslim north African country.http://africa.reuters.com/top/news/usnBAN130142.html   The Rising Threat of Revolutionary Islam in Algeria A radical Islamic victory in Algeria would pose significant long-term threats to US interests in North Africa, the Middle East, and the Muslim world ...http://www.heritage.org/Research/Africa/BG1060.cfm   2 bombings near Algerian capital wound 6 peopleThe Associated Press - Jun 4, 2008Algeria's Islamic militants have mounted increasing attacks over the past...

Al Qaeda's branch for North Africa on Thursday set a three-day deadline to meet conditions for the release of two Austrian tourists it claimed to have kidnapped in Tunisia last month. In a statement posted on the Internet - which included six photographs purportedly showing Austrians Wolfgang Ebner and Andrea Kloiber - al Qaeda in Islamic North Africa said it would free the pair if all of the group's members were released from jails in Tunisia and Algeria. The posting gave Austrian authorities three days, starting midnight Thursday, to comply.

CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa claimed responsibility for kidnapping two Austrian tourists last month in Tunisia in an audio recording aired Monday on Al-Jazeera television. A man who identified himself as Salah Abu Mohammed said in the recording that the terrorist group kidnapped the two Austrians on Feb. 22 in retribution for Western cooperation with Israel, but said the hostages were in good health. "We tell Western tourists that at the same time they are flowing into Tunisian lands seeking joy, our brothers are being slain in Gaza by the Jews with the collaboration of the Western...

Petraeus: Al Qaida Trying to 'Come Back In' U.S. military officials said there will be no significant reduction in coalition troops in the Baghdad area as part of an effort to stop the Al Qaida offensive in northern Iraq. They said Al Qaida was trying to reenter Baghdad and reverse its losses in 2007. "Al Qaida is trying to come back in," U.S. military commander Gen. David Petraeus said. "We can feel it and see it, and what we're trying to do is rip out any roots before they can get deeply into the ground." Read More Militants Assert...

(IsraelNN.com) Members of the North African branch of the international terrorist organization Al-Qaeda announced Monday that they are holding two Austrian tourists hostage "in retribution" for what they claim is Western support for Israeli counter-terrorism operations. Al-Qaeda threatened more such kidnappings. AQIM will issue their demands for release of the two Austrians soon, Abu Muhammad said. In an audio tape aired by the Gulf-based Al-Jazeera satellite network, a man who claimed to represent Al-Qaeda in Islamic North Africa (AQIM), Salah Abu Mohammad, identified the two Austrians and said they were in good condition. The alleged hostages, a man and a...

Is the U.S. Failing in Afghanistan? It was malice in wonderland at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday as Bush Administration envoys insisted things are getting better in Afghanistan, while angry lawmakers from both parties cited facts and figures showing just the opposite. Even the senior Republican on the panel, Senator Richard Lugar, found the Administration's claims wanting. "I'm not sure that we have a plan for Afghanistan," he said. Long seen as the "forgotten war" eclipsed by Iraq in U.S. priorities, Afghanistan is in the Washington spotlight this week with the release of three independent reports concluding...

Attack in Algiers: A Warning to Europe ... Death and destruction revisited the Algerian capital of Algiers Tuesday morning when a pair of powerful car bombs exploded, and claimed what early estimates placed as 62 lives. Though no claims of responsibility have been made, security experts say there's little doubt the attack was the work of al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a group that formed an alliance with Osama bin Laden's global jihad in 2006. Officials say Tuesday's spectacular strike increases the risk that AQIM is ramping up its violent struggle to bring down the Algerian government. And as the...