Al-Qaida ‘has 18,000 terrorists waiting to attack’

Al-Qaida has more than 18,000 terrorists waiting for the order to attack targets in Europe and the US, preferably with weapons of mass destruction, a leading think-tank said today.

The war in Iraq has “focused the energies and resources of al-Qaida and its followers while diluting those of the global counter-terrorism coalition”, the International Institute for Strategic Studies argued.