US Edition 
Extremist group announces split from al-Qaeda
A North African extremist group, whose senior leaders were crucial allies of Osama bin Laden, has denounced terrorism and become the first organisation ever to leave al-Qaeda.
The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which once sought to overthrow Col Muammar Gaddafi, dealt a blow to bin Laden by reversing a decision made in 2007 to join al-Qaeda.
A statement from the LIFG leadership criticised "indiscriminate bombings" and the "targeting of civilians", saying that violence "did not achieve the aims of the group in removing oppression".
Al-Qaeda has come under mounting pressure in recent months. Missile attacks executed by American drones in Pakistan's Tribal Areas have taken a heavy toll on its core leadership.
Meanwhile, there are tentative signs of a backlash against bin Laden's ideology in the wider Muslim world. A former extremist leader, Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, better known as "Dr Fadl", has condemned al-Qaeda from inside an Egyptian prison.
The LIFG appears to have judged that the balance of advantage lies with leaving al-Qaeda. Officials doubt whether this will, on its own, have a significant impact on al-Qaeda's ability mount attacks.
But one official pointed out that LIFG figures had "graduated to become major players" in al-Qaeda and the group's withdrawal amounted to a "moral blow" to the network.
Abu Yahya al-Libi is among the battle-hardened Libyan members of al-Qaeda's core leadership. He won renown by escaping from an American detention centre at Bagram air base in Afghanistan in 2005 and regularly appears on al-Qaeda's propaganda videos, most recently a fortnight ago when he urged the overthrow of Somalia's new government.
Another LIFG veteran, Abu Laith al-Libi, organised a suicide attack at Bagram in 2007 which left 23 dead and coincided with a visit to the base from Dick Cheney, then US vice-president. Al-Libi was killed in Pakistan last year by an American drone.
In 2007, he announced that the LIFG had joined al-Qaeda. But the latest statement from the group's leaders, appearing on several extremist websites, said this had taken place without the "agreement of the majority" of its ruling council.
The decision to join bin Laden's network had been invalid, said the statement, and the LIFG "had no link to the al-Qaeda organisation in the past and has none now and we demand that those parties remove the name of the Fighting Group from those lists".
Al-Qaeda's core leaders have attached great importance to allying with existing groups of violent extremists, especially in North Africa. The Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, which has waged a brutal campaign in Algeria since the 1990s, announced in 2006 that it had joined bin Laden and renamed itself "al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb".
For the first time, al-Qaeda has now lost an affiliate. The LIFG's leaders were forced out of Libya in the 1990s and escaped to Afghanistan. They were compelled to scatter after the Taliban regime's downfall in 2001. The LIFG has been holding peace talks with Col Gaddafi's regime since 2006.