Dozens of prisoners, including convicted al Qaeda members, escaped an Iraqi jail after militants dressed in police uniform attacked the prison and released them, security sources said.
France confirmed "with certainty" that Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, one of al Qaeda's most feared commanders in Africa, had been killed in Mali last month in a French-led offensive.
At least 23 people were killed and dozens more wounded when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives inside a Baghdad cafe, police and hospital officials said.
One of two men charged in Canada with plotting to attack a passenger train dismissed Canada's criminal code as imperfect, saying only God is perfect.
A Saudi who was freed by US authorities from detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, only to become second-in-command of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has died after being wounded by Yemeni security forces, a Yemeni security official said today.
France plans to begin pulling troops out of Mali from March and will focus its operations on flushing out Islamist rebels in the north of the country, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said today.
Chadian soldiers in Mali have killed Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the al Qaeda mastermind of a bloody hostage-taking at an Algerian gas plant in January, Chad's military said today.
Syrian rebels, some from Islamist units, fired machineguns and mortars at helicopters grounded at a northern military air base near the main Aleppo-Damascus highway, a monitoring group said.
French troops in armoured vehicles advanced today towards a central Malian town abandoned by Islamist rebels after days of air strikes, moving cautiously for fear of guerrilla-style counterattacks by the al Qaeda-linked fighters.
French and Malian armoured columns rolled into the towns of Diabaly and Douentza in central Mali today after the al Qaeda-linked rebels who had seized them fled into the bush to avoid air strikes.
Al Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq has claimed responsibility for scores of attacks across the country against mostly Shi'ite Muslim targets this week which killed and wounded hundreds of people.
A series of bombings and shootings killed more than 70 people across Iraq in a bloody day of attacks underscoring the country's struggle with a stubborn insurgency more than half a year after the US military withdrew.
A Saudi national freed by US authorities from detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who then became second-in-command of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, was killed in Yemen, a Yemeni government website said.
The FBI is investigating an explosive device that could have been used by a suicide bomber on an airliner, and which was seized when the United States and its partners thwarted a plot believed linked to al Qaeda, US officials said on Monday.
Abu Yahya al Libi, a Libyan-born top al Qaeda leader, was killed in a US drone strike in Pakistan earlier this week, a US official said.
French police have arrested a man who took hostages in a bank in the southwestern French city of Toulouse today, two police sources said.
US national security officials are questioning a decision by military prosecutors to allege that Army Private Bradley Manning aided Al Qaeda's Yemen-based affiliate by leaking documents to the WikiLeaks website.
The French government was forced to reject accusations that intelligence lapses allowed a young Muslim with a violent criminal record, spotted twice in Afghanistan, to become the first al Qaeda-inspired killer to strike on its soil.
Osama bin Laden showed disdain for al Qaeda affiliates, fretted about his organization's image and was deeply worried about its security, according to documents seized from his hideout in Pakistan and released publicly.
Israel killed the leader of an al Qaeda-inspired faction in the Gaza Strip, accusing him of involvement in firing rockets and a planned attack on the Jewish state from the neighboring Egyptian Sinai.
Two suicide bombers drove a car packed with explosives into a Yemeni army base in the southern province of al-Bayda, killing one soldier, the Defence Ministry said, in an attack for which al Qaeda claimed responsibility.
US drone attacks killed at least 25 al Qaeda-linked fighters including one of their leaders while a Yemeni air force raid killed 20 more in the south, sources said, in the biggest airstrikes since Yemen's new president took office.
Anwar al-Awlaki, a US-born cleric linked to al Qaeda's Yemen-based wing, has been killed, Yemen's Defense Ministry said. According to a US official, Anwar al-Awlaki planned and directed attacks on US interests as "chief of external operations" for al Qaeda's Yemen-based wing, a senior US official said.
The head of the media department of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was killed in an air raid on militant outposts in Yemen, and gunmen retaliated by blowing up a gas export pipeline, Yemeni officials and residents said.
German anti-terrorism police arrested a 27-year-old man in the western city of Bochum suspected of links to a local al Qaeda cell and of planning an attack, the Federal Prosecutor said in a statement.
Al Qaeda's new second-in-command, Atiyah abd al-Rahman, was killed earlier this week in Pakistan, dealing a "major blow" to the group still reeling from the death of Osama bin Laden, US officials said today.
Nigerian authorities investigating last week's fatal bombing of the UN headquarters arrested two members of Islamist sect Boko Haram a week before the attack and said they suspect a third member with an al Qaeda connection led the plot.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that al Qaeda was behind a specific, credible but unconfirmed report of a threat to harm Americans, notably in New York and Washington.
New US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta arrived in Afghanistan today, saying he believed the strategic defeat of al Qaeda was within reach if the United States could kill or capture up to 20 remaining leaders of the core group and its affiliates.
Osama bin Laden was aware of the plot in which al Qaeda militants bombed London transport facilities on July 7, 2005, but it was the last successful operation he played a role in, US government experts have concluded.
Striking the United States remains a "significant goal" for al Qaeda and its affiliates nearly a decade after the September 11 attacks, the president's nominee to head the National Counterterrorism Center said.
Al Qaeda released a posthumous audio recording by Osama bin Laden in which he praised revolutions sweeping through several Arab countries, and called for more Muslim "tyrants" to be toppled.
Talks between Yemen's vice president and the opposition stalled today after the country's acting leader ignored the opposition's demand that President Ali Abdullah Saleh quit immediately.
Veteran militant Ayman al-Zawahri has taken command of al Qaeda after the killing of Osama bin Laden, an Islamist website said today, a move widely expected following his long years as second-in-command.
Suicide bombers attacked a Pakistani paramilitary academy, killing 80 people in revenge for the death of Osama bin Laden as Pakistani anger over the US raid to get the al Qaeda leader showed no sign of cooling.
Former President George W. Bush, who spent years searching for Osama bin Laden, had two words for President Barack Obama when Obama told him of the al Qaeda leader's death: "Good call."
Al Qaeda released a posthumous audio recording by Osama bin Laden posted on Jihadi websites, in which the Islamist group's ex-leader praised revolutions sweeping the Arab world.
A series of photographs acquired by news agency Reuters which showed three men who might have tried to defend Osama bin Laden were published after the US government had announced that it would not show photographs of the assault where the leader of Al Qaeda was killed. See slideshow
A senior US intelligence official, who released five video clips of bin Laden taken from the compound in Abbottabad, said the information retrieved by US forces represented the largest trove of intelligence ever obtained from a single terrorism suspect.
In a reversal for President Barack Obama, the United States will try self-professed September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four co-conspirators at Guantanamo Bay and not in New York as Obama had hoped.
German police arrested three suspected members of al Qaeda, averting "a concrete and imminent danger" of a terrorist operation, authorities said.
The US killing of Osama bin Laden shows that the Taliban cannot defeat the United States in Afghanistan and that it should abandon its ties to al Qaeda, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said.
Two French hostages kidnapped in Niger have been found dead, a government source in the African country said. The pair were abducted from a bar overnight hundreds of kilometres from the lawless desert where Islamist militants, rebels and bandits flourish.
US security officials warned major Wall Street institutions of a potential threat after an al Qaeda-linked magazine suggested financial markets could be a target of attack, the FBI said.
Arab countries appealed to the United Nations to impose a no-fly zone on Libya as government troops backed by warplanes fought to drive rebels from remaining strongholds in western Libya.