explosives found on cargo plane from yemen

Security ramped up after suspicious package found on cargo plane

Cameron Smith, AP
The Daily Telegraph
October 30, 2010 9:10AM

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/security-ramped-up-after-suspicious-package-found-on-cargo-plane/story-e6freuy9-1225945431997

UPDATE 8.53am: PRESIDENT Barack Obama has declared that authorities had uncovered a "credible terrorist threat" against the United States after the overseas discovery of US-bound packages containing explosives aboard cargo jets.
Obama said both had been addressed to Jewish organisations in the Chicago area.

The disclosures triggered a worldwide alert amid fears that al-Qaeda was attempting to carry out fresh terror attacks.

The events "underscore the necessity of remaining vigilant against terrorism", the president said.

The packages both originated in Yemen, but Obama did not explicitly assign blame to al-Qaeda.

The events unfolded four days before US elections in which discussion of terrorism has played almost no role.

Obama stepped to the podium in the hours after officials disclosed that authorities in Dubai intercepted an explosive device bound for a Chicago-area Jewish institution.

The second package was aboard a plane searched in England, and officials said it contained a printer toner cartridge with wires and powder.

That second package was aboard a plane in the East Midlands, north of London.

Obama did not identify any institution that had been targeted.

Several other cargo planes at airports along the Eastern Seaboard of the United States also were searched, and officials said no explosives were found.

An Emirates Airlines passenger jet carrying cargo from Yemen was escorted from the Canadian border to New York City by two military fighter jets, US officials said.

They said it was a precautionary action.

An FBI spokesman in Chicago, Ross Rice, said both suspicious packages had been sent from the same address in Yemen.

The president refrained from assigning blame to Yemen's al-Qaeda branch, but officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said they were increasingly certain that was the source.

The same group was responsible for the attempted bombing of a US-bound airliner last Christmas.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the ongoing investigation.

White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan later told reporters that the explosives "were in a form that was designed to try to carry out some type of attack", but he provided no further details.

"The forensic analysis is under way," he said, adding, "clearly from the initial observation, the initial analysis that was done, the materials that were found in the device that was uncovered was intended to do harm."

National security has been increased in both the US and Britain.

The discovery triggered a wave of concern across the US; with American fighter jets escorting a commercial flight into New York after it was considered to be "an aircraft of interest".

Bomb experts also searched cargo planes at Philadelphia International Airport and Newark Liberty Airport, New Jersey.

The New York Police Department's bomb squad also has stopped a delivery truck on the Queensboro Bridge in New York.

US media reports suggested that at least one of the cargo planes being swept in the United States had also passed through East Midlands Airport.

Fran Townsend, who was homeland security adviser to president George W Bush, told CNN the security scare followed growing intelligence concerns about a possible attack by al-Qaeda's Yemeni affiliate.

"There had been a rising concern about packages and cargo being used to launch an attack," she said.

"The US intelligence community has been focused on that. You add to that in the last 24 hours a tip from a very credible US ally who provided some, I'm told, very specific information about packages coming out of Yemen.''

Townsend said a plane had been grounded in Dubai in addition to the one in Britain and that the concern was over cargo planes containing packages from Yemen.

"They'll look at every single carrier who potentially either took packages out of Yemen or picked them up en route in a second country on their way here from Yemen.''

Yemen, the ancestral homeland of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, faces a growing threat from the local branch of his global jihadist network.

Over the past decade, it has become a haven for violent extremists, becoming the headquarters of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the hiding place for US-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi, who was linked to high-profile terror plots in the United States.

- with AAP