Middle East, Terrorist | featured news

At least 53 people were killed and 90 others wounded Wednesday in an insurgent attack on an Afghanistan governor's compound where Taliban fighters were facing trial, local officials said. Nine insurgents with explosives strapped to their bodies stormed the compound in Farah province, bordering Iran, Reuters reported.

Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri said a film made in the United States mocking the Prophet Mohammad showed Washington was waging a "crusader Zionist war" against Muslims and he called for more protests outside American embassies.

The brazen shooting of a defiant teen blogger has stirred the conscience of Pakistan, a nation plagued for decades by violent extremism. An angry chorus of voices in social media, on the street, in newspapers and over the airwaves has decried the attack against 14-year-old Malala Yousufzai as cowardly and an example of a government unable to cope with militants.

The Taliban is stronger now than before President Barack Obama ordered a surge of troops to Afghanistan, two senior U.S. lawmakers said on Sunday, contradicting the administration's assessment of the insurgency.

Authorities in northern Pakistan were looking for 384 inmates who escaped from a prison early Sunday morning after 300 Taliban militants raided it.

Gunmen launched multiple attacks in the Afghan capital Kabul on Sunday, assaulting Western embassies in the heavily guarded, central diplomatic area and at the parliament in the west.

The United States has announced a $10 million reward for information leading to the capture of Hafiz Saeed, a Pakistani militant leader accused of orchestrating the 2008 Mumbai attacks, who in recent months has emerged at the vanguard of a prominent anti-American lobbying group.

Osama bin Laden in his final days schemed over an effort to kill President Obama as well as other top U.S. officials, documents recovered from his compound show.

The Taliban have met with U.S. officials to discuss possible peace talks, but do not want to negotiate with Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government, a Taliban spokesman said Tuesday.

In his first national address since June, Syrian President Bashar Assad on Tuesday blamed a nearly 10-month uprising in his nation on unspecified "foreign conspiracies" and vowed to strike "with an iron fist" against opponents he labeled terrorists.