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KABUL, Afghanistan -- In a blow to al Qaeda in Pakistan, the terrorist group confirmed Sunday that one of its top weapons researchers, Abu Khabab al-Masri, was killed, apparently in a U.S. missile strike.

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....

Officials: Al Qaeda's Mad Scientist Killed One of al Qaeda's top chemical and biological weapons experts was killed in an air strike by a CIA pilotless drone in a remote Pakistani border region, senior Pakistani intelligence officials told CBS News Tuesday morning. Intelligence officials investigating the Sunday night missile attack confirmed that Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri was one of six men killed and his remains had been positively identified. "We now have a positive ID on the body. I can confirm to you that Al-Masri has been killed,"

<p>Al-Qaeda's top expert on chemical and biological weapons is believed to have been killed Monday in a suspected US missile strike in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas, security officials said.</p> <p>Egyptian militant Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri, had a five-million-dollar bounty on his head and allegedly trained hundreds of extremists at camps in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region.</p>

WANA, Pakistan (Reuters) - A suspected U.S. missile strike on a Pakistani madrasa near the Afghan border killed six people on Monday, possibly including an al Qaeda chemical and biological weapons expert, Pakistani security officials said. A senior Pakistani security official said Abu Khabab al-Masri, an Egyptian chemist regarded as one of al Qaeda's top bomb makers, could have been the target. Monday's pre-dawn attack blitzed a house close to a madrasa used by militants near Azam Warsak village, about 20 km (12 miles) west of Wana, the main town of the South Waziristan tribal region, a known hotbed of...

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...

Kabul, 4 Feb. (AKI) - United States intelligence sources are reportedly claiming al-Qaeda nuclear weapons expert Abu Khabab al-Misri was the real target of last week's CIA airstrike in northern Pakistan which is said to have killed one of the terror network's key leaders, Abu Laith al-Libi. Al-Misri is reportedly able to make so-called 'dirty bombs' that contain radioactive waste mixed with explosives. US intelligence services reportedly believe that al-Qaeda has since 1997 been seeking to acquire 'dirty bombs' and other weapons of mass destruction.

Obscure al-Qaida Chemist Worries Experts By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent 7 minutes ago He's a mystery in a red beard, with a strange alias and a degree in chemical engineering. In the hands of this alleged al-Qaida operative, it's a specialty that summons visions of poison gas and mass terror. Al-Qaida is "wedded to the spectacular," notes U.S. counterterrorism analyst Donald Van Duyn, and elusive Egyptian chemist Midhat Mursi was said to be exploring such possibilities when last seen, brewing up deadly compounds and gassing dogs in Afghanistan. Van Duyn's FBI and other U.S. agencies are interested enough...

A former leader of an armed Islamic group in Libya, Numan Bin Uthman, has written a letter to al-Qaeda second in command Ayman al-Zawahiri telling him that Jihadi groups in Arab countries have failed and that the strategy of using nonconventional WMD to deter an invasion of Afghanistan was a misguided and failed strategy. The letter needs to be understood in the context of the fact that the microbiologist that Ayman Zawahiri and Mohammed Atef used to infiltrate US biodefense, Ali Al-Timimi, had a stern warning not to invade Iraq hand-delivered to every member of Congress on October 6, 2002...

In the small rural community of Kamdesh, Nuristan province, US troops recently constructed a base that houses hundreds of troops, making it the first such outpost of its kind to be built in one of the most untamed areas of Afghanistan. The base at Kamdesh is dug into a rugged mountain side that backs up to a sheer mountain side; prime real estate in the insurgent saturated northeast. Serving as an extension of forward operating base Naray, which lies due south in Kunar province, Kamdesh aims to reach further into the northern areas, namely Nuristan, to help the locals with...

Pakistani intelligence agents hunted Wednesday for the graves of four al-Qaida militants believed killed in an airstrike near the Afghan border — including at least one suspected high-ranking al-Qaida figure. ABC News and The New York Times reported that Pakistani officials believe a master bomb maker and chemical weapons expert for al-Qaida was killed in the attack on the village of Damadola last week. He was identified as Midhat Mursi, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri, who ran an al-Qaida training camp and has a $5 million reward on his head. Also killed, Pakistani officials believe, was Khalid Habib, the...

<p>Concerns are growing that Al Qaeda or a related group could detonate a "dirty bomb" that would spew radioactive particles across an American or European city, according to intelligence analysts, diplomats and independent nuclear experts.</p> <p>Although safeguards protecting nuclear weapons and components have improved, experts said the radioactive ingredients that are wrapped around conventional explosives to create a contaminating bomb remain available worldwide, often stored in non-secure locations.</p>

<p>WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence agencies have launched a worldwide manhunt for al Qaeda's master bombmaker, who may be building a "dirty" bomb and other new devices for terror attacks inside the United States, sources said.</p> <p>U.S. counterterrorism officials told The Post it was new information about the activities of Egyptian-born bomb maker Midhat Mursi, in part, that led the Bush administration to secretly dispatch Department of Energy radiological detection teams to New York and four other cities over New Year's Eve.</p>

Intelligence sure bin Laden had bio weapons: Newsweek Posted: 7:51 AM (Manila Time) | Nov. 18, 2002 Agence France-Presse NEW YORK -- Senior US intelligence officials are "100 percent certain" Osama bin Laden had biological and chemical agents before the US invasion of Afghanistan, Newsweek magazine reported Sunday. Detained al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects held at a US base in Cuba said bin Laden is a "multiple plotter," according to a US official who spoke to Newsweek about tales to explode a so-called "dirty bomb" to spew radioactive material over an area of the United States. Officials have been paying special...