US Marines in helicopters and Humvees flooded into a Taliban-held town in southern Afghanistan’s most violent province early today – the first major American operation in the region for years.

Twelve people died in overnight clashes in Baghdad’s Sadr City district, which has become a chief battleground between US and Iraqi forces and the Mahdi Army of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, police and hospital officials said today.

American troops and Iraqis unearthed 37 bodies in a mass grave northeast of Baghdad today, the US military said.

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.

A man told a court that he learned about weapons and explosives and prepared for holy war at an al Qaida training camp allegedly attended by terror suspect Jose Padilla.

A parked car exploded near a market in central Baghdad on today, killing at last 11 people and wounding about 40, police said.

Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush failed to act on intelligence and eliminate key al Qaida terrorists by force in the years before the September 11 attacks, according to a probe in the US.

US forces in Iraq have captured one of the most senior members of Ansar al-Islam, an extremist group suspected of having ties to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network, US defence officials said.

At least 20 people were killed when four explosions tore through the Moroccan coastal city of Casablanca damaging a synagogue, the Belgian consulate and a Spanish restaurant, officials said.

Discoveries in Afghanistan show that al-Qaida’s research into biological weapons was more advanced than previously estimated by the United States, according to a new intelligence report.

A 28-year-old Moroccan student was today going on trial in Germany, charged with aiding the Hamburg terrorist cell involved in the September 11 attacks on the United States, which included lead suicide hijacker Mohammed Atta.

Fears were growing tonight that Osama bin Laden may have eluded the coalition and tribal forces which successfully laid siege to the last remaining al-Qaida stronghold in Afghanistan.

Al-Qaida fighters holding out in the terror gang’s final Afghan stronghold are facing an ultimatum to surrender or be annihilated.

An Islamic group says a close associate of Osama bin Laden has been killed by a United States air strike in Afghanistan.