Security officials today said Yemen has deployed several hundred extra troops to two mountainous eastern provinces that are al-Qaida’s main strongholds in the country.

Yemeni forces have stormed an al-Qaida hide-out in the country’s east, setting off clashes, a security official said today.

AL-QAIDA leader Osama bin Laden described President Barack Obama as “powerless” to stop the war in Afghanistan, and Americans’ inability to grasp why the September 11 attacks occurred has “cost you a lot without any result whatsoever”.

The US commander in Iraq says Americans remain “absolutely committed” to withdrawing all combat troops from urban areas by the end of the month.

An Australian man who spent time at an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan and who met Osama bin Laden was found innocent today of receiving funds from the terrorist group.

US and Iraqi forces freed 42 Iraqis – some of whom had been held and tortured for months – in a raid on an al-Qaida prison in Iraq, the US military said.

US forces rescued 41 Iraqi civilians today from an al-Qaida hide-out north-east of Baghdad, including some who showed signs of torture and broken bones, a senior US official said.

FRANCE’S foreign intelligence service learned as early as January 2001 that al-Qaida was preparing a hijacking plot likely to involve a US airplane, former intelligence officials said yesterday, confirming a report that also said the CIA received the warning.

Pakistan today rejected the US intelligence chief’s claims that Osama bin Laden and his deputy are hiding in the country, and that al-Qaida is setting up camps near the border with Afghanistan.

Egyptian authorities, already struggling with elusive terror cells in the rugged Sinai Peninsula, moved quickly yesterday – arresting 30 men in the triple bombings that ripped apart a resort town on a tranquil holiday evening.

A defence psychologist today said he concluded that Zacarias Moussaoui is a paranoid schizophrenic based on observations of the actions and writings of the confessed terrorist conspirator who was described earlier as convinced US President George Bush will set him free.

A MALAYSIAN recruited by al-Qaida to pilot a plane in a second wave of September 11-style attacks on the United States pulled out after observing the carnage of the 2001 assaults, south-east Asian officials said yesterday.

AL-QAIDA in Iraq claimed yesterday to have shot down a US attack helicopter that crashed near Ramadi, killing two Marines on board.

US troops pushed forward in their biggest operation this year in western Iraq, seeking to retake three Euphrates River towns from al-Qaida insurgents, with at least five US service members killed so far in the fighting.

Claus-Peter Tiemann, Hamburg

A Briton said to have been held in Pakistan over the London terror attacks had telephone links with two of the suicide bombers, it was reported today.

Osama bin Laden’s alleged bodyguard and chauffeur today becomes Guantanamo Bay’s first terror suspect brought before a US military commission that allows for secret evidence and no government appeals.

A senior planner of the September 11 2001 attacks said the Hamburg al-Qaida cell was smaller than investigators believed, consisting only of himself and three of the suicide pilots, a German court was told in the first public release of statements by suspects in US custody.

Afghan and American troops, backed by warplanes, killed up to 50 militants in a day-long battle near the Pakistani border.

THE only September 11 suspect ever convicted was freed by a German court yesterday pending the outcome of his retrial on charges of aiding the suicide pilots.

A court in central Turkey has ordered the arrest of nine Turks believed to have received training at al-Qaida camps abroad.

A MOROCCAN who was found guilty of helping the September 11 suicide hijackers told a court yesterday his conviction was “unjust” and denied that an al-Qaida cell ever existed in Hamburg.

Al-Qaida is still planning an attack similar to the September 11 strikes, using hijacked aircraft as missiles, the US was warned today.

ONE of the September 11 hijackers transformed from a western-oriented man into a fervent Muslim who often talked about waging a jihad or holy war, his former girlfriend told a German court yesterday.

GERMANY launches the second trial of a suspected September 11 plotter on Thursday in a case expected to provide further insight into the Hamburg al-Qaida cell that led the hijacked airliner attacks on US cities.

AL-QAIDA may have financed the Bali bomb attacks that killed 202 people, including 26 Britons, a jailed Muslim radical said yesterday at the trial of a key bombing suspect.

Two men, who escaped from a Yemeni jail last month, have been charged in the US with helping plan the attack on the destroyer Cole in Aden that killed 17 sailors.

Three Saudi Arabians have been jailed for 10 years by a Moroccan court for leading an al-Qaida plot to attack British and US warships.

Six al-Qaida suspects, including Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenant in Yemen, were killed when US forces carried out their first overt strike on the terror group in the Middle East by firing a Hellfire missile on the suspects’ car.

As Taliban defences around Kabul crumbled under the fury of American bombs, the man responsible for it all - Osama bin Laden - was far away in the safety of this mountain fortress.

The first US soldier killed during the Operation Anaconda assault on al-Qaida this month in Afghanistan may have been hit by friendly fire, officials disclosed today.

Advancing coalition forces today claimed control of the Shah-e-Kot valley in eastern Afghanistan, sweeping all but a few small groups of al-Qaida and Taliban fighters as allied troops worked their way through the warren of mountain caves.

Al-Qaida militants practised carrying out a mass assassination of world leaders and an attack on a motorcade, according to a video obtained in Afghanistan and broadcast on Australian television.

Singapore is claiming to have averted bomb attacks on military targets and embassies in the country after arresting 15 suspected Islamic militants, some of whom allegedly trained at al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan.

Osama bin Laden may be bottled-up with his forces in the Tora Bora region said US officials.

Afghan tribal commanders have set a new deadline for the surrender of al-Qaida fighters cornered near Tora Bora.

Zacarias Moussaoui, the first person to be indicted on charges directly relating to the September 11 terror attacks in New York and Washington, picked up Islamic extremism in Britain, his brother said.

Anti-Taliban tribal warlords in eastern Afghanistan have declared a ceasefire in their battle with

US bombers are attacking al-Qaida's Tora Bora cave complex as the hunt for Osama bin Laden is stepped up.

Hundreds of anti-Taliban troops have been battling with Osama bin Laden's fighters near mountain hideouts.

US experts are investigating more than 40 sites in Afghanistan where al-Qaida operatives could have made weapons of mass destruction.