Group Behind 9/11 Gets Hands on Material to Make Nuclear Bomb—Report

A shipment of enriched uranium, which can be used to make nuclear weapons, has fallen into the hands of 9/11 terrorist group al-Qaeda, according to a Middle Eastern report.

The material was allegedly being delivered from Iran to Houthi rebels in Yemen when some of it was intercepted by the terror group, Israeli newspaper Maariv said, citing unnamed sources.

The respected conservative publication, one of the most-read newspapers in the country, said on Monday that the incident happened in the al-Bayda area of Yemen.

Details were scarce, and it remains unclear how part of the shipment was reportedly intercepted or diverted.

This is a developing story and Newsweek has reached out to the U.S. State Department to seek clarification and comment.

Newsweek has also contacted Iranian authorities.

Al-Qaeda, an Islamist terror group based in the Afghan-Pakistani borderlands, was founded by Osama bin Laden in the 1980s.

The group suddenly became a household name in the U.S. after al-Qaeda operatives hijacked and crashed four planes in American skies in September 2001, targeting sites including the World Trade Center in New York. Some 3,000 people were killed in the atrocity known afterwards as '9/11.'

The attack led to the decades-long and controversial "war on terror" and bin Laden was eventually killed in May 2011. The group's numbers began to dwindle and a blood-thirsty splinter group, Islamic State, began to recruit jihadists and gain notoriety instead.

But al-Qaeda hit the headlines again in August this year when a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan killed Ayman al-Zawahiri, who had helped bin Laden plot 9/11 and had subsequently replaced him as leader.