LONDON (Reuters) – Deprived of Osama bin Laden’s fundraising starpower, al Qaeda’s commanders face the prospect of a cash crunch that would complicate the task of evading capture by their U.S. pursuers.

The likely successor to Osama bin Laden is Ayman al-Zawahri, an Egyptian who lacks the former Saudi-born figurehead’s depth of contacts among potential donors in the Gulf, a region seen in the West as an important funding source for militant groups.

LONDON (Reuters) – Al Qaeda documents captured in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden will give Western intelligence a clearer idea of the threat he posed, and may help settle the latest bad-tempered spat between Washington and Islamabad.

There was derision in Pakistan on Sunday at a suggestion by an unnamed U.S. official that bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound was an “active command and control centre” for al Qaeda. One senior Pakistan security official dismissed that as nonsense.

LONDON (Reuters) – Al Qaeda documents captured in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden will give Western intelligence a clearer idea of the threat he posed, and may help settle the latest bad-tempered spat between Washington and Islamabad.

There was derision in Pakistan Sunday at a suggestion by an unnamed U.S. official that bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound was an “active command and control center” for al Qaeda. One senior Pakistan security official dismissed that as nonsense.

LONDON (Reuters) – An al Qaeda message confirming Osama bin Laden’s death is intended to show a globally-scattered following that the group has survived as a functioning network.

The group’s commanders will hope the rapidity of their reaction just five days after bin Laden was killed will inspire affiliates to attack the West. Al Qaeda’s core leaders, believed hiding in the Afghan-Pakistan border region, normally take weeks or months to react to events in the outside world.

LONDON (Reuters) – An al Qaeda message confirming Osama bin Laden’s death is intended to show a globally-scattered following that the group has survived as a functioning network.

The group’s commanders will hope the rapidity of their reaction just five days after bin Laden was killed will inspire affiliates to attack the West. Al Qaeda’s core leaders, believed hiding in the Afghan-Pakistan border region, normally take weeks or months to react to events in the outside world.

LONDON (Reuters) – An al Qaeda message confirming Osama bin Laden’s death is intended to show a globally-scattered following that the group has survived as a functioning network.

The group’s commanders will hope the rapidity of their reaction just five days after bin Laden was killed will inspire affiliates to attack the West. Al Qaeda’s core leaders, believed hiding in the Afghan-Pakistan border region, normally take weeks or months to react to events in the outside world.

LONDON (Reuters) – One day in Afghanistan in the late 1990s Osama bin Laden gathered several of his sons and told them he had pinned up a note at a mosque seeking volunteers to be suicide bombers.

With anticipation “shining in his eyes,” one of the sons later wrote, he seemed to be suggesting his children should add their own names to the list of the willing.

LONDON (Reuters) – Evading capture will be the overwhelming priority for al Qaeda’s central leadership in the Afghan-Pakistan border area after the U.S. seized potentially vital intelligence during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

The delicate task of agreeing a replacement for the group’s founder and inspirational figurehead, let alone avenging his death, are challenges that may have to wait.

LONDON (Reuters) – Evading capture will be the overwhelming priority for al Qaeda’s central leadership in the Afghan-Pakistan border area after the U.S. seized potentially vital intelligence during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

The delicate task of agreeing a replacement for the group’s founder and inspirational figurehead, let alone avenging his death, are challenges that may have to wait.

LONDON (Reuters) – Osama bin Laden’s decade on the run after 9/11 may have come to its end in part because his large hideout reportedly lacked a phone and Internet connection — an unusual absence likely to have drawn investigators’ curiosity.

For a decade, his presumed choice of Pakistan as a hideout from history’s biggest manhunt worked well enough. Experts speculated that he had sought protection from local militants in their remote mountain bastions, repaying the hospitality by helping their bloody effort to make Pakistan ungovernable.