Al-Qaeda core leaders losing control: US

Leaders of Al-Qaeda lost some control of the terror network last year due to the arrests and deaths of top operational planners, but the group remains the most prominent terror threat facing the United States and its allies, the State Department has said.

In its annual report on worldwide terrorism, the department on Friday singled out Iran as the most active state sponsor of terrorism, saying that its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Ministry of Intelligence and Security directly have been involved in the planning and support of terrorist acts.

Overall, the report tallied about 11,000 terror attacks around the world last year, resulting in more than 14,600 deaths.

That is almost a fourfold increase in attacks from 2004, though the agency blames the change largely on new ways of tallying the incidents.

About 3,500 of last year's attacks occurred in Iraq and about 8,300 of the deaths occurred there, accounting for a large part of the increase over 2004.

The report said that Osama bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda leaders are scattered and on the run and Afghanistan is no longer a safe haven for the network.

In addition, Al-Qaeda's relations with the Taliban that once ruled Afghanistan are growing weaker and the group's finances and logistics have been disrupted, the report said.

"Al-Qaeda is not the organisation it was four years ago," the report said.