Washington: Al-Qaeda, which is on the run and reeling under US attacks, is still capable to carry out catastrophic attacks like September 11, and infecting many other terror groups, which have become the next wave of threat, CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) director George Tenet has warned.

"Even as al-Qaeda reels from our blows, other extremist groups within the movement it influenced have become the next wave of the terrorist threat. Dozens of such groups exist," Tenet told the commission probing the September 11, 2001 attacks.

"Also, even catastrophic attacks on the scale of September 11 still remain within al-Qaeda's reach," he said.

One of the most immediate threats, Tenet said, is from smaller international Sunni extremist groups who have benefited from al-Qaeda links. They include groups as diverse as the al-Zarqawi network, the Ansar al-Islam in Iraq, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, Jemaah Islamiyah in Southeast Asia, and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

A second level of threat comes from small local groups with limited domestic agendas that work with international terrorist groups in their own countries. These include the Salifiya Jihadia, a Moroccan network that carried out the May 2003 Casablanca bombings, and similar groups throughout Africa and Asia, Tenet told the commission earlier this week.

"These far-flung groups," he said, "increasingly set the agenda, and are redefining the threat we face". They are not all creatures of bin Laden, and so their fate is not tied to his. They have autonomous leadership, they pick their own targets, and they plan their own attacks, he said.