US President Barack Obama’s administration’s decision last week to close nearly two dozen diplomatic missions and issue a worldwide travel alert came after the US intercepted electronic communications in which the head of al-Qaeda ordered the leader of the group’s affiliate in Yemen to carry out an attack as early as this past Sunday, US officials said.
The intercepted conversations last week between Ayman al--Zawahiri, who succeeded slain al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden as the head of the global terrorist group, and Nasser al-Wuhayshi, head of the Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), revealed what US intelligence officials and lawmakers have described as one of the most serious plots against US and Western interests since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
US officials said that it was highly unusual for senior al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan to discuss operational matters with the group’s affiliates. The communication between the two men seems to indicate that al-Zawahiri — whom administration officials have portrayed as greatly diminished and hindered in running a global terror network while deep in hiding — still has a strong influence over a group in Yemen that has become al-Qaeda’s most powerful offshoot.
In recent weeks, al-Zawahiri has elevated al-Wuhayshi to what one official described as the new “general manager” of the global terror network, making him the second-most important man in the organization, counterterrorism officials said.
The identities of the two al-Qaeda leaders whose discussions were monitored and the imminent nature of the suspected plot — in the intercepts, the terrorists mentioned Sunday as the day that the attacks were to take place — help explain why the US, as well as other Western governments, took such extraordinary steps in the past few days to close embassies and consulates in the Middle East and North Africa.
“This was significant because it was the big guys talking, and talking about very specific timing for an attack or attacks,” one US official who had been briefed on the intelligence reports in recent days said.
Yemen experts said that al-Wuhayshi, who was bin Laden’s private secretary in Afghanistan, remains particularly loyal to the core group of al-Qaeda operatives who are believed to mostly be hiding in Pakistan.
Meanwhile, a statement issued yesterday says the US State Department has ordered the departure of non-emergency US government personnel from Yemen “due to the continued potential for terrorist attacks.”
The travel warning says US citizens currently in Yemen should depart and calls the security threat level in Yemen “extremely high.”
The move came after Yemeni authorities released the names of 25 wanted al-Qaeda suspects on Monday, saying they were planning terrorist attacks in the capital, Sana’a, and other cities across the country.
The UK government also announced yesterday that all staff at the British embassy in Sana’a have been temporarily withdrawn due to the terror theat.
Additional reporting by AP
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
RSS