Free Republic

WASHINGTON - Pakistani authorities have captured a man accused of playing a leading role in the Sept. 11 attacks and the bombing of an American warship in Yemen, a catch President Bush called a "major, significant find" in the war against the ailing al-Qaida network. Waleed bin Attash, also known as Tawfiq Attash or just Khallad, coordinated the activities of at least two of the hijackers who crashed into the Pentagon during the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. counterterrorism officials said. He is also one of two figures described as masterminds of the bombing of the U.S. Navy destroyer on Oct....

ROME (AFP) - Two young Italian women kidnapped in Iraq last week have been taken by their captors to the flashpoint city of Fallujah, according to an Italian newspaper that quoted non-Italian intelligence services. The Corriere della Sera said aid workers Simona Pari and Simona Torretta, who were taken at gunpoint from their Baghdad offices along with two Iraqi colleagues on September 7, "may have been taken to the Sunni Muslim stronghold of Fallujah, which is inaccessible to coalition forces." "The report, passed on by the intelligence service of a foreign country, is apparently backed up by information picked up...

US forces have all but wiped out an alleged al-Qaeda linked group in northern Iraq with help from their Kurdish allies - and Iranians who have sealed off the Islamist militants' only exit. US special forces set out today from Halabja in Iraqi Kurdistan with Kurdish fighters to track down militants of the Ansar al-Islam group who might have survived the bombing and the onslaught on their stronghold. The US forces kept mum on the location of their hunting ground, but a Kurdish official said it was a mountainous region on the border with Iran because "they have nowhere else...