Middle East, Terrorist | featured news

Iraqi authorities have issued an arrest warrant for Sunni Muslim Vice-President Tareq al-Hashemi on suspected links to terrorism after the government said it obtained confessions from his bodyguards, an interior ministry spokesman said on Monday.

Taliban members who agree to stop fighting are being paid 100 pounds per month in an attempt to reduce attacks against NATO troops in Afghanistan, a newspaper says.

Pakistan's Taliban movement, a major security threat to the country, is holding exploratory peace talks with the U.S.-backed government, a senior Taliban commander and mediators told Reuters on Monday.

The Taliban hit back with a vengeance following the US-led invasion of 2001.

The administration has put the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq on a terrorism blacklist and is offering a $10 million reward for information.

Military officials in Pakistan announced the arrest of three men on Monday they said were senior Al Qaeda operatives who had been planning attacks on Western targets.

Direct U.S. talks with the Taliban had evolved to a substantive negotiation before Afghan officials, nervous that the secret and independent talks would undercut President Hamid Karzai, scuttled them, Afghan and U.S. officials told The Associated Press....

A Palestinian attacker wounded seven Israelis near a Tel Aviv nightclub early Monday, hitting a police checkpoint with a stolen taxi and then stabbing others, police said. The attacker was a Palestinian in his twenties from the city of Nablus, according to Israeli police spokeswoman Luba Samri. Just before 2 a.m., the attacker stole a taxi in south Tel Aviv and then drove into a police checkpoint securing the street near a popular nightclub, she said.

The number two leader of al Qaeda, Atiyah abd al-Rahman, was killed on August 22 in Pakistan, a senior U.S. official told Reuters on Saturday.

Taliban bombers attacked offices belonging to the British Council and the United Nations in the center of the Afghan capital Friday. At least three people were killed, police said.