The Sun started this story which The Telegraph has taken up. While I have little sympathy with al-Qaeda and take an unpleasant shadenfreud delight in hearing of terrorists blown up by their own bombs I do hope this outbreak is from poor hygene and primitive ideas and not from attempts at biological warfare.
The Black Death has reportedly killed at least 40 al-Qaeda operatives in North Africa.
The disease, which struck Europe in the Middle Ages killing more than 25 million people, has swept through a training camp for insurgents in Algeria.
The arrival of the plague was discovered when security forces found the body of a dead terrorist by a roadside, the Sun reports.
The victim belonged to the large al-Qaeda network AQLIM (al-Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb).
A security source told the paper: "This is the deadliest weapon yet in the war against terror. Most of the terrorists do not have the basic medical supplies needed to treat the disease.
"It spreads It spreads quickly and kills within hours. This will be really worrying al-Qaeda."
The victim was a terrorist in AQLIM (al-Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb), the largest and most powerful al-Qaeda group outside the Middle East. It trains Muslim fighters to kill British and US troops.
Now al-Qaeda chiefs fear the plague has been passed to other terror cells — or Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. It can be in the body for more than a week — highly contagious but not revealing tell-tale symptoms.
The al-Qaeda epidemic began in the cave hideouts of AQLIM in Tizi Ouzou province, 150km east of the capital Algiers. The group, led by wanted terror boss Abdelmalek Droudkal, was forced to turn its shelters in the Yakouren forest into mass graves and flee.
A source said: “The emirs (leaders) fear surviving terrorists will surrender to escape a horrible death.”
The plague is still a problem in places including southern Asia, sourthern Africa and central America. It can be treated now with antibiotics and is virtually unheard of in the western world. I hope no infected terrorist arrives in Europe; it is bad enough having TB and polio back. And rickets, although that is not infectious.