Al Qaeda has returned to its longtime base of operations in southern Afghanistan and is plotting new attacks against the West, fifteen years after being overrun by U.S.-led NATO forces following the 9/11 attacks, according to a published report. Britain's Daily Telegraph, citing Afghan security officials, reported Monday that Al Qaeda cells have moved back into southern Afghanistan following the withdrawal of most U.S. and allied troops in 2014. The report claimed that most of the cells are operating around the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban. The Telegraph reports that security officials believe that Al Qaeda's return to Afghanistan is the latest move to re-establish its strength after the killing of Usama bin Laden by Navy SEALs in 2011 and the rise of ISIS, a former Al Qaeda splinter group. The report comes days after a U.S. drone strike killed Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Akhtar Mansour.

KABUL – Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mansour, who according to U.S. officials was probably killed in a drone strike, took over as head of the insurgent movement last July following the revelation that the group's founder, Mullah Omar, had been dead for two years. He was initially thought to favor peace talks with the government, but after becoming leader he repeatedly refused to come to the negotiating table. For some Mansour was the obvious choice to succeed Mullah Omar, the one-eyed warrior-cleric who led the Taliban from its rise in the chaos of the Afghan civil war of the 1990s. Born in the same southern province, Kandahar, some time in the early 1960s, Mansour was part of the movement from the start and effectively in charge since 2013, according to Taliban sources. Mansour spent part of his life in Pakistan, like millions of Afghans who fled the Soviet occupation.