Todays News!Suicide bomber strikes in Pakistan!Deaths in Yemen raid on al-Qaeda !

Suicide bomber strikes in Pakistan

A suicide bombing killed at least four people and injured 14 others Thursday in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, an official said. The blast occurred at a checkpoint on Mall Road, a major thoroughfare in a commercial area, said Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister for Northwest Frontier Province. The checkpoint is next to a building that houses airline and insurance company offices. The attacker detonated his explosives after he was stopped and searched, Hussein said. Police cordoned off the area while ambulances shuttled casualties to a nearby hospital. Peshawar, the provincial capital, is situated on the road into Afghanistan and is considered by many to be at the core of Pakistan's war on terror. Since October, the city has been the target of a series of attacks launched by militants in retaliation for a major Army offensive to root out the Taliban.

Source:CNN

Dozens killed in Yemen air strike on al-Qaeda suspects

At least 30 suspected al-Qaeda militants have been killed by an air strike in a remote mountainous area of Yemen, security officials say.An unnamed official told reporters the strike took place as dozens of militants gathered in Shabwa province, east of the capital, Sanaa. Two senior al-Qaeda commanders in the Arabian peninsula could be among the dead, he said. Al-Qaeda has carried out frequent attacks in Yemen in recent months. The Saudi government has recently expressed its concern about the resurgence of the movement in the region. 'Planning attacks'AFP news agency quoted the security official as saying Saudis and Iranians had been at the meeting. "We are still unsure if two of the top leaders have been killed or not," Reuters news agency quoted him as saying. Yemeni forces have intensified their campaign against militants "One of them is the Saudi al-Qaeda member Nasser al-Weheshi." Another official told AFP that the suspected militants had been meeting to plan terror attacks in Yemen, in retaliation for Yemeni military air strikes carried out last week. Reuters news agency cited a security official saying that a radical Muslim preacher linked to the US army psychiatrist charged over the fatal shooting of 13 people at a US army base was suspected to be among those killed. Yemen-based al-Qaeda sympathiser Anwar al-Awlaki, who was released from a Yemeni prison last year, and Maj Nidal Hasan had exchanged e-mails before the shooting at Fort Hood last month, US officials say. Last week, Yemeni officials said they had killed 34 suspected al-Qaeda militants and arrested 17 in operations in Abyan province in the south and in Arhab, north of Sanaa. Officials said the militants had allegedly been planning multiple suicide attacks, with eight of them preparing explosive vests at the time of the raids. Analysts say Yemen, the ancestral home of al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, has long been an ideal base for jihadists. With its rugged mountains and traditionally weak central authority, it is terrain well suited to militant groups looking for hiding places and training camps.

Source: BBC

Deaths in Yemen raid on al-Qaeda

Footage of one al-Qaeda commander at a public rally in Yemen was obtained by Al Jazeera At least 30 suspected al-Qaeda fighters have been killed in a dawn air raid by Yemeni forces in the eastern Yemeni province of Shabwa. Among those thought to have been killed in the raid early on Thursday was Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim preacher linked by US intelligence to a gunman who killed 13 people at a US army base in Texas. "Anwar al-Awlaki is suspected to be dead [in the air raid]," an unnamed Yemeni official was quoted by the Reuters news agency as saying. Al-Awlaki has been linked to Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a US soldier who shot dead 13 people at the Fort Hood army base in the US state of Texas. Casualties disputed Thursday's raid supposedly struck at a meeting of al-Qaeda operatives in Wadi Rafadh, a remote mountainous region lies about 650km east of the Yemeni capital Sanaa. Alongside al-Awlaki, several senior members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula - a group formed of al-Qaeda fighters in Yemen and Saudi Arabia - were also thought to have been killed in the raid. But there was confusion over the number of casualties. "Local sources have said that the casualties from this strike was seven people only," Mohammed al-Qadhi, a correspondent in Yemen for Abu Dhabi's The National newspaper, told Al Jazeera. "All of those are from al-Qaeda, according to local sources, but the government reports say there are more than 30 [dead]." Al Arabiya television said there had been four air raids. Unconfirmed deaths Nasser al-Whaychi, the head of al-Qaeda in the Arabic Peninsula, was thought to have been present at the meeting at the time of the attack but it is not known if he was killed in the raid. Initial reports also said that two other al-Qaeda commanders, identified by security sources as Saad al-Fathani and Mohammad Ahmed Saleh al-Oumir, were among those killed. But there was no official confirmation that any of the men had been killed. Al-Oumir is thought to have been the man who spoke at a rally in Abyane, a rare public appearance by an al-Qaeda leader, footage of which was obtained by Al Jazeera. Thursday's attack comes a week after the raid on Abyane, which prompted the rally at which al-Oumir appeared and which allegedly killed dozens of civilians as well as al-Qaeda fighters. Yemen's government has been battling al-Qaeda in the country at the same time as dealing with a Shia uprising in the north and rising secessionist sentiment in the south.

Source: Al-Jazeera

Fresh strikes target Al Qaida top leaders, kill 30

An official statement said the latest raid targeted a meeting chaired by Nasser Al Wahayshi and Saeed Al Shihri, the top leaders of the Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. The regrouping of Al Qaida in Yemen comes after it had been targeted in Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Iraq.Image Credit: AP Sana’a: More than 30 Al Qaida operatives were killed when warplanes bombed a hideout for Al Qaida in the Shabwah province, an official statement said Thursday. A radical Muslim preacher, linked by US intelligence to a gunman who killed 13 people at a US Army base, is believed to have died in a Yemen air strike on Al Qaida militants, a security official said on Thursday. "Anwar al Awlaki is suspected to be dead (in the air raid)," said the Yemeni official, who asked not to be identified. The gunman in the Nov. 5 shooting at the Fort Hood, Texas army base, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, had contacts with Awlaki late last year, US authorities believe.

The statement said the raid targeted a meeting chaired by Nasser Al Wahayshi and Saeed Al Shihri, the top leaders of the Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. The official said initial reports that two top al Qaeda members in the Arabian peninsula had been killed could not be verified. "We are still unsure if two of the top leaders have been killed or not. One of them is the Saudi al Qaeda member Nasser al Weheshi," he added, declining to say whether more strikes would take place on Thursday. The meeting was held to make plans for a retaliatory action after last Thursday’s operation in Al Majalah, which killed dozens of people.

Source: GulfNews