Ahmed Shah Massoud, 2001 News

legendary guerrilla leader of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, which has relentlessly challenged the Taliban since 1996, was killed in a September suicide bombing. His attackers, two Algerian terrorists posing as television journalists, are believed to be part of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. Massoud was an insurmountable resistance leader during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.