US to warn citizens about travel to Europe
The United States is planning to warn Americans to be vigilant as they travel in Europe in light of intelligence pointing to possible attacks by al-Qaeda in Britain, France and Germany, a US official has said.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Saturday that the US was consulting with European governments about the possible action.
Last week British and US media reported that Western spy agencies had foiled an advanced al-Qaeda plan to attack European cities.
The New York Times quoted an American official as saying the US state department planned to issue the alert on Sunday.
A state department official declined to confirm the report, but said the US remained attentive to threats posed by al-Qaeda.
“We have been and continue to be focused on al-Qaeda’s interest in attacking us, our allies, and US interests abroad. We will spare no effort to thwart terrorist plans and will take further actions as appropriate,” the official said, without elaborating.
Germany said it knew of information pointing to possible al-Qaeda attacks in Europe and the United States.
The plot involving al-Qaeda and allied groups would have involved groups of assailants taking and killing hostages, possibly along the lines of the 2008 raid in the Indian city of Mumbai in which 166 people died, the sources said.
Drone attacks
Intelligence sources have claimed that an increase in strikes by unmanned US drone aircraft on suspected fighters in Pakistan in the past few weeks was part of efforts to thwart the suspected plot.
Frequent attacks by US drone aircraft have been heavily criticised by Pakistani leaders for killing innocent bystanders and infringing upon national sovereignty.
Pakistan publicly condemns the attacks as violations of its sovereignty, and the attacks are unpopular among the Pakistani people.
But the Pakistani government is believed to assist in at least some of the missile attacks, although the US does not publicly acknowledge the existence of the covert, CIA-run operation.
The UN has called for the US to end the CIA’s control over drone attacks, with Philip Alston, the special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, saying that the US spy agency does not provide enough transparency or accountability for the programme.
Alston said that the use of drone attacks risked creating a “Playstation” mentality towards killing, “because operators are based thousands of miles away from the battlefield, and undertake operations entirely through computer screens and remote audio-feed”.
Source: Aljazeera