World Gossip News

Algerian army helicopters killed a top al-Qaida leader and four associates as they sped through the southern Algerian desert, a local official said Thursday. The two four-wheel-drive vehicles were hit as they were carrying Khalil Ould Addah, known as Abu Bassen, the number three leader in the terror network's North African branch, said the official from the southern regional capital of Tamanrasset. Al-Qaida's North African branch emerged out of the radical Islamist groups trying to overthrow the Algerian government during the 1990s and to this day, its top leaders are believed to be hiding out in the mountainous Kabyle region in the north, near the capital.