The day after their El Arish rampage, Al Qaeda gunmen Saturday, July 30, blasted the al Shulaq terminal of the Egyptian-Israeli gas pipeline north of the Sinai town, halting supply for the fifth time since February. This time was different. The saboteurs fired rockets at the terminal until it caught fire, the same tactics they used to raid El Arish Friday. Egyptian forces confronted the assailants but could not save the terminal. This was al Qaeda's first attack on a strategic Israeli installation.

Anders Behring Breivik, 32, a vegetable grower, described as a "Conservative nationalist" and admirer of Churchill, Kant and Plato, is in Norwegian policy custody, accused of bombing government buildings in central Oslo and killing seven people, Friday, July 22, then 90 minutes later, killing 85 teens aged 13-16. He shot some with an automatic weapon; others jumped into the water and their bodies were later recovered. 

Al Qaeda is carving out a roomy operations base in South Yemen, while Iranian Al Qods officers are helping Houthi rebels take over the north. Talks with the opposition are at an impasse as President Ali Abdullah Saleh, still recuperating in Riyadh from an attempt on his life, insists ...

Western intelligence circles believe master terrorist Ilyas Kashmiri survived a US rocket attack although his al Qaeda group the 313 Brigade eulogized him. Syed Saleem Shahzad, the Pakistani journalist who knew too much about him was abducted, tortured and killed, while his "man in India," David Headley is alive ...

The fingerprints of Al Qaeda's operations commander Saif al Adal were all over the assault on the important Pakistani Mehran naval air base in Karachi, which began Sunday night, May 22 and ended only after 17 hours of fierce combat, debkafile's counter-terror sources report. The attack  hit a shared strategic Pakistani-US-Chinese installation, destroying US surveillance aircraft. It also impaired Pakistani reconnaissance capabilities against al Qaeda's strongholds in North Waziristan and its watch over the Arabian Sea dividing Pakistan from India. 

More al Qaeda appointees were named Wednesday, May 18 after its Shura council at its meeting on May 10 made Egyptian Saif al Adal interim operations chief. The appointment of Osama bin Laden's top terror whiz underlined the council's focus on revenge, say debkafile's sources. His team mates are Mohammad Ilyas Kashmiri and Adnan G. El Shukrijumah. Other new appointees are Adnan al-Khairi al-Masry as Head of General Command and Muhammed Adam Khan al-Afghani as Head of the Afghanistan/Pakistan arena.

Osama bin Laden's shoes are likely to stay empty for some time. Al Qaeda is not structured for a large-scale terror attack as an organization to avenge his death. Some ten top-notch operatives listed here have the will or ability - or both - for a lone wolf operation.

The al Qaeda leader never wavered from his basic conception that only a mega-attack on an American city devastating enough to rock the US economy would make Washington withdraw its forces from the Middle East. This is confirmed in the files taken from the Abbottabad villa after he was killed on May 2. Otherwise the materials examined so far contribute no hard intelligence to the war on al Qaeda or the prevention of another mega-attack in the US.

The US administration planned Osama bin Laden's death as a lever for al Qaeda's destruction. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's latest issue out  Friday tabs the ten master-terrorists still at large, including one who holds the key to a dirty bomb attack, and capable of masterminding revenge attacks.
This issue also assessed the prospects of Syrian President Assad's victory against his opposition.

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The Osama bin Laden operation was part of a US-Pakistani-Afghan package for getting US troops out of Afghanistan by removing the root-cause of the war and bringing the Taliban to the negotiating table through Pakistan's good services.

Osama bin Laden would have been easier prey in 2007. However, his elimination was placed on the backburners of the second Bush and the Clinton White House agendas. During those years, he lived quite comfortably under Pakistani protection and commuted between walled villas.

For President Barack Obama, removing the al Qaeda leader was part of his master plan for replacing the long-ruling Arab autocrats by new regimes with a place for the Muslim Brotherhood in government as counterweights to Muslim extremists. That is the incumbent's top goal compared with Bush who targeted Zarqawi in Iraq ...

And what's next for al Qaeda?  The latest  DEBKA-Net-Weekly out Friday dispels some of the fog around the killing of Osama bin Laden by a US special force - such as: Why now? Where were his bodyguards? What was he doing with five computers, 100 storage devices and no gun?
This issue also laid out information on al Qaeda's next steps and answers another question: Where to look for its dead leader's avengers?
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Like Iran and its surrogates, the late Osama bin Laden's organization has established networks around Israel's borders in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egyptian Sinai. In the Gaza Strip, harbored by Hamas, al Qaeda operatives have built six villas on the model of Bin Laden's compound in Pakistan. All the same, Mahmoud Abbas will join Hamas Wednesday in signing a Palestinian unity accord that opens the West Bank door not only to Hamas terror but to its al Qaeda partners enjoying sanctuary in Gaza.

Al-Tahwir Al-Jihad, the biggest Al Qaeda group based in the Gaza Strip, murdered Italian peace activist Vittorio Arrigoni Thursday, April 14, shortly after they kidnapped him - although Hamas was given until 5 p.m. Friday to release its leader in exchange for their Italian victim. Arrigoni arrived on an anti-blockade ship three years ago and carried out overseas commissions for Hamas. His captors, suspecting him of spying for the West, may have tortured him to death.

In accusing Israel of killing the two passengers of a Hyundai Sinai near Port Sudan Tuesday, April 5, Khartoum claimed a missile was fired from an aerial drone or a vessel on the Red Sea. debkafile's exclusive sources reveal that a special operations team landed by sea and used a surface missile to hit the car and kill two top executives of the Iranian-Hamas arms smuggling network in Sudan.This network works with a gang which once served Osama bin Laden.

The London conference ended Tuesday, March 29 divided between the US and Britain in favor of arming the Libyan rebels and France and Italy against. Control passed to a “contact group” with the vague brief to map out Libya’s future. The Libyan conflict was thus relegated to the same uncertain fate as the other Arab uprisings, whose outcomes are unknowable. debkafile nevertheless discerns half a dozen fixed points, not all of them favorable, in the fog of uncertainty:

A wealth of revelations on the undercover wars waged by the US and Britain in their separate interests on both sides of the Libyan uprising. Muammar Qaddafi, too, has a state of the art system of espionage, eavesdropping and assassins in place. Al Qaeda, too, has looking for pickings ...

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's next issue out Friday has a wealth of revelations on the undercover wars waged by the US and Britain in their separate interests on both sides of the Libyan uprising. They are not alone. The US is setting military-intelligence infrastructure in place for military intervention – notwithstanding the ongoing debate in Washington; Muammar Qaddafi is drawing greater empowerment from the revolt; and Al Qaeda, too, has chosen its role in the upheaval.

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The Middle East and North Africa are beset with two civil wars, have brought to power two military juntas, imperil seven regimes, including Pakistan and provided Al Qaeda with fresh fields to conquer.