New York, New Jersey, Connecticut News: AlQaida

Sunday, 13 May 2012

American drone strikes kill 11 al-Qaida militants

By AHMED AL-HAJSANAA, Yemen -- Two suspected U.S. drone strikes killed 11 al-Qaida militants in southern Yemen on Saturday, Yemeni military officials said.

The first attack took place near the border of Marib and Shabwa provinces southeast of the capital, Sanaa, killing six militants, including one Egyptian national, the officials said. The second strike hit two cars in Marib, killing five al-Qaida-linked fighters.

Over the past year, parts of Marib, Shabwa and other southern provinces have fallen under the control of al-Qaida militants who have capitalized on the turmoil in Yemen that stems from the popular uprising that toppled longtime leader Ali Abdullah Saleh.

There was no immediate word from the U.S. on whether Washington was behind Saturday's attacks. In the past two weeks, suspected U.S. airstrikes have killed at least three senior al-Qaida operatives in southern Yemen.

Yemeni officials have reported more frequent U.S. drone strikes since Yemen's new president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, took power in February after Saleh stepped down. Hadi has since ramped up the fight against al-Qaida militants.

The Pentagon recently sent American military trainers to Yemen, and Washington has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to assist the impoverished Arab nation fight al-Qaida and other extremist groups in the country.

The U.S. says al-Qaida's Yemeni branch, known as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, is one of the group's most dangerous offshoots.

Yemen was the launching pad for two foiled al-Qaida attacks on U.S. territory: the Christmas 2009 attempt to down an American airliner over Detroit with an underwear bomb and the sending of printer cartridges packed with explosives to Chicago-area synagogues in 2010.

On Monday, The Associated Press disclosed that the CIA thwarted yet another plot by AQAP to destroy a U.S.-bound airliner using a bomb which could have been undetectable by conventional airport scanners.

Separately, Yemeni military officials said an assault by government troops Saturday on al-Qaida forces around the southern city of Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan province, left a general, a soldier and six militants dead.

The attack was part of the Yemeni military's broader campaign against al-Qaida-linked fighters in the south. Residents say the military used warplanes and artillery to pound areas west and north of Zinjibar.

All officials spoke on condition of anonymity in line with military regulations.

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Friday, 20 May 2011

Al-Qaida considered oil tankers as terror targets

By EILEEN SULLIVANWASHINGTON -- The terror group al-Qaida last summer considered hijacking and detonating oil tankers in non-Muslim seas to provoke an "extreme economic crisis" in the West, according to documents seized from Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan, the U.S. government said.

It added there was no specific or imminent threat and said officials didn't know whether al-Qaida had continued the plotting since last year.

In a confidential warning obtained by The Associated Press, the FBI and the Homeland Security Department said that al-Qaida sought information on the size and construction of oil tankers, and determined that blowing them up from the inside would be easiest due to the strength of their hulls. Al-Qaida recommended test runs of the plot.

"We are not aware of indications of any specific or imminent terrorist attack plotting against the oil and natural gas sector overseas or in the United States," DHS spokesman Matthew Chandler said in a statement Friday. "However, in 2010 there was continuing interest by members of al-Qaida in targeting oil tankers and commercial oil infrastructure at sea."

The government warning went to federal, state and local law enforcement and companies in the oil and gas industries. The Homeland Security Department said it was not raising the nation's terror alert level.

The government encouraged companies to continue random screening, warn employees about possible threats and establish procedures for reporting suspicious activity.

The threat to oil tankers was especially notable because it suggested that al-Qaida was adopting the practices of Somali pirates, who have had remarkable success in recent years using small boats to race alongside and board large commercial ships off the East African coast. They hold the cargo and crew for economic ransom.

Al-Qaida successfully attacked the USS Cole in October 2000, killing 17 sailors, using a small boat loaded with explosives when the warship was docked in the port of Aden in Yemen, which is just across the Gulf of Aden from Somalia.

The government said al-Qaida recognized that the period from mid-spring to late summer would represent the best weather to approach oil tankers. Al-Qaida determined that sinking tankers from the outside would require too many explosive charges, and instead focused on detonating the fuel storage areas aboard tankers.

In 2007 the Japanese tanker the Golden Nori was hijacked carrying 40,000 tons of benzene. Initially, American intelligence agents worried that terrorists from Somalia's Islamic extremist insurgency could be involved and might try to crash the boat into an offshore oil platform or use it as a gigantic bomb in a Middle Eastern port. When the Japanese vessel was towed back into Somali waters and ransom demanded, the coalition was relieved to realize it was a pirate attack.

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Associated Press writer Katharine Houreld contributed to this story from Nairobi.

al qaida, terrorism, u.s. & world news

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