Al Qaeda

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French troops arrive at Bamako's airport on Jan. 17, 2013, as fighting raged in one Mali town, airstrikes hit another and army troops raced to protect a third on the seventh day of the French-led military intervention to wrest back Mali's north from al Qaeda-linked groups. (Associated Press)

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Claims of responsibility for an attack on an Algerian natural-gas field in January are tied to a group led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who had been a regional commander in northwestern Africa for al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. (IntelCenter)

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Fighters from the al Qaeda-linked Ansar Dine stand guard in Timbuktu, Mali, as they prepare to publicly lash a member of the Islamic Police found guilty of adultery. (Associated Press)

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Shaker Masri, 29, of Chicago was sentenced in federal court in Chicago on Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2012, for plotting to attend a training camp in Somalia to become a suicide bomber for the terrorist groups al Qaeda and al-Shabab. (AP Photo/U.S. Marshals Service)

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Blindfolded and handcuffed suspected al Qaeda members are led away to detention centers in an Iraqi army base in Hillah, Iraq, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, on Friday, July 20, 2012. (AP Photo/Alaa al-Marjani)

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** FILE ** The drone-strike killing in June of Al Qaeda’s erstwhile second-in-command, Abu Yahya al-Libi, is said to be affecting al Qaeda’s numbers and morale, causing some jihadis to leave Pakistan. (Associated Press)

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In the Pakistani tribal regions, such as South Waziristan, that harbor al Qaeda and other jihadist groups, militants from Central Asia, China, Turkey and even Germany are growing in number, eclipsing Arabs, say intelligence officials, analysts and residents of the region. (Associated Press)

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** FILE ** In this Tuesday, April 20, 2010, file photo, Iraqi policemen search the site of a joint U.S-Iraqi raid that killed Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayyub al-Masri, two top-ranking al Qaeda figures, about six miles (10 kilometers) southwest of Tikrit. The first online statement from the new leader of al Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq claims that the militant network is returning to the old strongholds from which it was driven by U.S. forces and their Sunni allies prior to the American withdrawal at the end of last year, and that it is preparing operations to free prisoners and assassinate court officials. (AP Photo, File)