Al-Qaida’s leader has marked the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks by calling on Muslims to strike inside the United States, with big attacks or small, using any opportunity they can to “bleed” America financially.

The Taliban has vowed to hunt down and kill a Pakistani teenager they shot earlier this week.

Indian authorities are questioning an internet cafe owner and two other people as they scramble for leads into a powerful briefcase bomb that tore through the crowds outside a New Delhi courthouse, killing 12 people.

A bomb hidden in a briefcase ripped through a crowd of people waiting to enter a New Delhi court today, killing 11 people and wounding scores more.

Few in the Arab world today, unlike in Kosovo, for example, harbour many illusions about Western assistance. As for suggestions that the West somehow arm the rebels, isn’t that what happened with the mujahedeen in Afghanistan and which led to Taliban rule in the first place?

WHAT would a major sporting event be without the preliminary hullabaloo about the venue? It won’t be ready; its cost has over-run; there are terrorists in the bushes; it’s too expensive.

Pakistan has ramped up its campaign against Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, placing a bounty on the chieftain’s head and launching air strikes on his stronghold in the country’s north-west.

A LITTLE-KNOWN Islamic group claimed responsibility in a text message sent to a news channel yesterday, for serial blasts in India’s north-east that claimed 76 lives the day before, police said.

Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto said today she would defy a new death threat to start campaigning in cities across the country.

Pakistan today rejected calls from Benazir Bhutto for outside help to investigate the suicide bomb aimed at her last week which killed 136 people.

Al-Qaida’s No 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, condemned UN peacekeepers in Lebanon as enemies of Islam and warned the terror group would strike the Persian Gulf and Israel, suggesting new fronts in its war against the West in a video today marking the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

A bomb explosion outside a mosque holding a memorial service for a mujahedeen commander in eastern Afghanistan has killed five police officers, a police spokesperson has said.

An al-Qaida-led insurgent group said in a website statement today that it had decided to kill four kidnapped Russian Embassy workers after a deadline for meeting its demands passed.

Security forces nabbed the suspected military commander and the alleged money man of a banned Islamic group blamed for a series of deadly bombings in Bangladesh, claiming a breakthrough today in their fight against the militants.

Al-Qaida’s leader Osama bin Laden is alive and well and leading the holy war against the West, the terror group’s second-in-command said in a videotape broadcast on the internet today.

Insurgents today killed 19 Iraqi soldiers and wounded four others in a co-ordinated ambush northeast of Baghdad just two days after the deadliest attack against United States Marines in four months.

The American military launched a major new offensive today, involving about 2,500 Marines, soldiers and sailors near the Syrian border, aimed at destroying an al-Qaida in Iraq network.

SUNNI-LED insurgents killed 11 Iraqi security forces and wounded 14 in two separate attacks yesterday, as Shiites began celebrating a major Muslim holiday. Al-Qaida in Iraq threatened more attacks on diplomats here.

An al-Qaida-linked group posted an internet statement today claiming responsibility for the string of bombings that rocked London and killed at least 49 people, promising more attacks in London, which it described as the “capital of the infidels”.

An alleged al-Qaida militant cried today after taking the stand on charges that he belonged to a cell accused of helping plot the September 11 attacks, and he said he had testified in Spain under duress.

A co-defendant told police that a key al-Qaida suspect – who earlier this week called himself a peace-loving moderate Muslim – is a radical who recruited men for “holy war” training in Afghanistan, according to testimony read to a Madrid court today.

A video delivered to an international news organisation has apparently shown the release of two Indonesian journalists who were kidnapped in the volatile Iraqi city of Ramadi last week.

Eleven Iraqis and a US Marine were killed in election violence today as insurgents clashed with US troops and blew up a school slated to serve as a polling centre.

Gunmen stormed the compound of a Saudi company in a fashionable Baghdad neighbourhood, seizing an American, a Nepalese and four Iraqis after a gun battle in which a guard and one of the attackers were killed.

Gunmen assassinated Baghdad’s deputy governor today as a fresh brigade of American soldiers arrived in the capital – reinforcements that will push US military strength in Iraq to its highest level since the summer of 2003.

Kidnapped Northern Irish UN worker Annetta Flanigan was today featured in a video released by her captors who are demanding the withdrawal of UK troops from Afghanistan.

A militant group claiming responsibility for kidnapping three foreign UN workers said today it will execute them unless Britain withdraws its troops from Afghanistan and two other governments stop supporting US policy.

The suspected leader of a Muslim cell that allegedly plotted to blow up Spain’s National Court in Madrid hoped to kill senior judges and destroy massive case files on Islamic terror probes, officials said today.

Mujahedeen, or holy fighters, have taken control of much of Afghanistan and driven US forces into the “trenches”, according to a tape By Osama bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, aired on Al-Jazeera TV tonight.

India and Pakistan today held their first substantive talks in six years on the disputed Kashmir region – one of the world’s most dangerous flashpoints and a key hurdle in their revived peace process.

THE al-Qaida group responsible for abducting and killing an American engineer say they were aided by sympathisers in the Saudi security forces — a claim denied by Saudi authorities.

The al-Qaida group that beheaded an American engineer said sympathisers in the Saudi security forces provided police uniforms and cars used during the victim’s kidnapping, according to an Islamic extremist website.

The al-Qaida cell that kidnapped and killed American Paul M. Johnson Jr. claimed today that sympathisers in the kingdom’s security forces supplied it with police uniforms and vehicles and set up fake checkpoints to facilitate last week’s abduction.

Iraqi insurgents targeted the British run city of Basra today killing at least 55 people, including ten children on their way to schools, in a series of bomb blasts.

The US military was today investigating an explosion at a weapons cache in Afghanistan that killed seven American soldiers and wounded three in what Afghan officials said was an accident.

Islamic militants fighting Indian control over Kashmir vowed today they would not halt their insurgency despite an agreement between India and Pakistan to start peace talks that will include their bitter dispute over the divided Himalayan territory.

A MAN claiming to be Saddam Hussein said in a tape aired on the Arab television station Al-Jazeera yesterday he is in Iraq directing attacks on US forces.

American forces scoured the desert today for two US soldiers who were apparently abducted from an observation post north of Baghdad.

Hundreds of French police raided the Paris offices of the Iranian opposition group the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran today.

THE US military issued an ultimatum yesterday to an armed Iranian opposition group operating in Iraq, insisting that it lay down its arms or face attack.

An Iranian opposition group said today that Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards have crossed into Iraq where the group is based, killing 10 of its members in clashes that lasted several days.

A new audio tape said to be by Osama bin Laden urges Muslims to carry out suicide attacks and to rise up against Arab governments that have supported the US-led war in Iraq.

Three American doctors were shot dead today in the missionary hospital where they worked in Yemen, security officials said.

Afghanistan's Taliban rulers have shut down the BBC's office in the capital Kabul and ordered its correspondent to leave.