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.

The allegations that al-Qaeda has now sourced some enriched uranium come amid escalating tensions between the U.S. and Iran over the country's nuclear program, with talks on the issue breaking down two months ago, in September.

At the time, Israel's defense minister Benny Gantz claimed Iran would be able to produce enough enriched uranium to make three nuclear warheads within a few weeks.

And he claimed to know of 10 facilities in Syria that were producing weapons to arm Iran, which in turn was arming its proxies such as the Islamist group Hezbollah in Lebanon.

This weekend, Israel reportedly warned Lebanon that it would bomb its international airport in Beirut if it allowed arms transfers to Hezbollah via a private airline, the Dubai-based TV network Al-Arabiya reported, citing Saudi sources.

A United Nations watchdog warned earlier this year that Iran had violated a 2015 accord by increasing its nuclear weapons stockpile.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released a statement in March stating Iran had a stock of 33.2 kilograms, or 73.1 pounds, of uranium enriched to up as much as 60 percent fissile purity.