WESTERN intelligence agencies were reported yesterday to have foiled simultaneous terrorist attacks in Germany, Britain and France later this year, on the scale of the 2008 Bombay bombings.
German media reports said the al-Qaeda plans came to light and were intercepted two weeks ago through the interrogation of a German-Afghan man in Pakistan. The man, identified as Ahmed Siddiqui, reportedly admitted to belonging to an Islamist group in Hamburg, where the 9/11 bombings were planned.
He is said to have named all those involved in the plan with whom he trained in Pakistan. Some were Arabs, he reportedly said during interrogation near Kabul, some had German or Chechen citizenship. A British government spokesperson said the plot was still in an “embryonic” stage and was not advanced enough to warrant an increase in the country’s terrorism alert level.
In Paris, the Eiffel tower was evacuated for the second time in a week yesterday after an unspecified threat.
A spokesman for the German interior ministry said the “current indication does not warrant a change in the assessment of the danger level”.
Wolfgang Bosbach, security spokesman of the ruling Christian Democrats, said the German intelligence services were aware of the plans. “It’s a worrying situation but there were no concrete indicators where and when exactly attacks were planned,” he said.
Reports claimed the bombings were to be carried out in the style of the bombings in Bombay in 2008 that claimed 166 lives.
Citing US intelligence sources, the Wall Street Journal said the terrorism plans were halted through the deployment of remote-control drones in the Pakistani region of Waziristan. The newspaper said there were more US-ordered drone attacks in the past month in Afghanistan than there had been in all of the previous six years. The targets were said to be Taliban strongholds.