The United States government has warned local law enforcement authorities that al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups could soon launch a series of attacks on US passenger trains and buses similar to recent bombings in Spain and Israel, administration officials said.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Homeland Security Department said in a bulletin dispatched on Friday to police departments and other law enforcement agencies that the bombings could be expected as early as this summer, said the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The federal government said readily available materials such as ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel could be used to manufacture bombs that are likely to be hidden in simple, unremarkable luggage such as backpacks and duffel bags, according to the officials.
These components had been successfully used by Timothy McVeigh to build a truck bomb that destroyed the Alfred P Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995 and killed 168 people.
The warning contains a reminder that al-Qaeda and other radical Islamic groups have demonstrated their ability to attack public transportation facilities with conventional explosives and that they are not averse to using suicide bombers, the officials said.
They cautioned, however, that the bulletin was not backed by any specific intelligence pointing to an imminent strike and should be seen as a precaution.
”The information that goes into these comes from many sources,” one of the officials said. ”If it was a specific corroborated threat, the warning would be going out to the public.”
The national colour-coded terror alert level, which currently remains at ”yellow”, or elevated, was not expected to go up.
The US action follows the discovery in Spain of a new bomb planted on a high-speed railway line linking Madrid and Seville.
Spanish authorities said earlier on Friday the device appeared to be similar to those used in the March 11 bombings on four commuter trains in Madrid that killed 191 people.
Coming just days before a parliamentary election and largely blamed on Islamic militants, the Spanish train bombings are credited with defeating the government of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, a fervent supporter of the US-led war in Iraq.
The US will hold presidential, congressional and local elections on November 2.
But the political campaigns are expected to reach their peak this summer with the Democratic and Republican Party nominating conventions held in Boston and New York respectively. — Sapa-AFP