al-Qaeda

When a fake sewage tanker truck carrying 3,000 pounds of explosives managed to reach a high-security district of Kabul on May 31, then detonated in an explosion that left 150 people dead and 400 wounded, no insurgent or terrorist group asserted responsibility. But immediately, the rumors began to spread. The Haqqanis. It had to be […]

Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his deputy Rod Rosenstein toured the facilities at the military prison located at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, this weekend. This lead observers to speculate on a potential Trump administration effort to revive the detention center’s use for detainees from the Islamic State group. According to a statement released by a Justice […]

This is a tough pill to swallow. Since 2003 we’ve seen the troubled city of Mosul in northern Iraq change hands numerous times.  From Saddam, to the coalition, to the government of Iraq (GOI), to ISIS, and now the city appears to be back under the nominal control of GOI, at least on paper.  Many […]

Omar Khadr, a Canadian-born man who killed an American Special Forces soldier in Afghanistan when he was 15 while fighting for Al Qaeda, will receive an apology and $8 million from the Canadian government. The decision was made this week following years of political controversy in Canada over the plight of a man who had […]

African powers launched a new multinational military force to tackle Islamist militants in the Sahel on Sunday, which French President Emmanuel Macron told a regional summit should be fully operational by the autumn despite its current budget shortfall. Some observers see the initiative of the G5 Sahel bloc – Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger and […]

The United States successfully killed one of al-Qaida’s senior leaders in the Arabian Peninsula, Abu Khattab al Awlaqi, in an airstrike conducted in Yemen’s Shabwah governorate on June 16, according to Defense Department and CENTCOM releases. Abu Khattab al Awlaqi, the emir for al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, was killed alongside two of his group’s […]

U.S. senators called on Congress on Tuesday to take back its authority to determine whether the country goes to war, saying recent U.S. strikes in Syria were not covered by existing authorizations for the use of military force. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has begun considering legislation that would cover military action in Syria, Afghanistan, […]

According to a press release provided by U.S Central Command, American forces conducted a raid on an Al Qaeda compound on the Arabian Peninsula on Tuesday.  Initial reports indicate that the raid was a success, resulting in the death of seven terrorist combatants with no reports of U.S. casualties released thus far. The raid reportedly […]

In a new video released by the terrorist organization Al Qaeda, Osama Bin Laden’s son, Hamza Bin Laden, offers potential jihadists with advice on how to successfully engage in lone-wolf style terror attacks in the West, calling on Muslims to target Americans and Jews in particular. “Know that inflicting punishment on Jews and crusaders where […]

Editor’s note: The following is a white paper submitted by Dr. Jason Thomas, PhD. Jason is a friend of SOFREP and specializes in field-based assessments in complex operating environments. —Desiree Abstract The proposition that counterterrorist and counterinsurgent strategy and tactics may be contributing to the natural selection of terrorists and insurgents requires real, as opposed to […]

The leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has claimed that members of his terrorist organization have fought alongside U.S.-backed forces in Yemen’s civil war. Qasim al-Rimi, the current leader of AQAP, who assumed the position after his predecessor was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2015, said that his fighters have joined […]

The Pentagon is considering sending between 3,000 to 5,000 additional troops to Afghanistan to advise Afghan military and police units fighting the Taliban, as well as an unspecified number of special operations forces to fight ISIS and al-Qaida militants along the Pakistani border. A senior Afghan defense official also told the Military Times that NATO was considering  deploying up […]