US intelligence agencies have issued an internal alert, warning that Muslim extremists were planning to strike again, possibly targeting a US nuclear power plant, The Washington Times reported yesterday.
The newspaper said the warning came within the past two weeks in a classified report that listed six potential targets and methods of attack.
Citing officials familiar with the report, the newspaper said the plots outlined in the alert included a bombing or airline attack on a US nuclear facility; a bombing against a US warship in Bahrain; another hijacked airliner attack on a building and a vehicle bombing in Yemen.
The Times said the alert was based on intelligence gathered overseas. The newspaper also quoted an unnamed defense official as saying that intelligence gathered in Afghanistan had helped foil three planned attacks.
On Wednesday, NBC News reported that the Space Needle, a high-profile landmark in Seattle, was apparently targeted for attack by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, according to evidence US troops recovered in Afghanistan.
The report cited US officials as saying the evidence included plans to attack other targets in Washington state, including the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River, one of the world's largest hydroelectric dams and a major power source in the Pacific Northwest.
US President George W. Bush outlined the newly discovered US evidence against al-Qaeda in his State of the Union address on Tuesday, as he warned that the war against terror was just beginning.
A report, submitted by CIA director George Tenet to Congress on Wednesday, said that US officials had uncovered rudimentary diagrams of nuclear weapons in a suspected al-Qaeda safehouse in Kabul.
The report says terrorists are not believed to have a functional weapon, however.
Other evidence obtained in Afghanistan shows that al-Qaeda operatives have fallen for a number of scams in their attempts to acquire nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, a senior government analyst said.
``That's good news for us,'' said Gary Richter, a terrorism expert with the Energy Department's Sandia National Laboratories. "It shows they really don't know what they are doing."
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