Terrorist group al Qaida was planning radioactive truck attacks
on Los Angeles, New York and Miami, US authorities confirmed a
report on Sunday.
The planned attacks were revealed this week by Debka.com, an
Israeli Web site that monitors terrorist activities. The website
reported the threat based on "a rush of electronic chatter" on al
Qaida Web sites.
According to the Israeli website, al Qaida communications
accused America of not taking seriously last week's video narrated
by al Qaida spokesman Adam Gaddahn, an American who grew up in
Orange County, Southern California.
The video threatened terrorist attacks on American interests,
especially embassies.
"They will soon realize their mistake when American cities are
hit by quality operations," one message said.
Another message said the attacks would be carried out "by means
of trucks loaded with radio-active material against American's
biggest city and financial nerve center."
Debka reported that a third message mentioned New York, Los
Angeles and Miami as targets.
The report said there was no way of gauging for sure how serious
the threats were, or whether they were just mean to "give the
Gaddahn tape extra mileage."
"But it is important to note that the exchange of messages took
place over al Qaida's internal Internet sites and that they
contained the threat of radioactive terror and specific American
cities for the first time after a long silence on these
subjects."
In response, authorities in New York City increased security and
set up checkpoints to inspect vehicles.
But unlike authorities in New York, Los Angeles police had not
beefed up security in response to the report.
In Los Angeles, the terrorist threat level was not raised and no
increased security or extra patrols were ordered because the report
was unverified, said Officer Mike Lopez of the Los Angeles Police
Department's media relations office.
"We always hope to be prepared if anything should happen, but
there is no special alert at this time," Lopez said.
(Xinhua News Agency August 13, 2007)
