Intercepts from Qaida chief sparked US alert
WASHINGTON, District of Columbia — Intercepts between Al-Qaida chief Ayman AlZawahiri and the leader of the group's Yemen affiliate sparked the closure of US missions overseas and a global travel alert, US media reported yesterday.
The New York Times said in its online edition that the electronic communications last week revealed that Zawahiri had ordered Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the head of Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, to carry out an attack as early as this past Sunday.
CNN meanwhile reported that Zawahiri told Wuhayshi to "do something," causing officials in both Washington and Yemen to fear an attack was imminent.
As a result, roughly two dozen US diplomatic posts were shuttered across the Middle East Sunday, and the State Department, insisting it was acting " out of an abundance of caution," said 19 would remain shut through Saturday.
Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is seen as the terror network's most capable franchise following the decimation of its core leadership in Afghanistan and Pakistan in recent years.
The Yemen-based group has attempted a number of attacks on US soil, including a bid to bring down a passenger plane in 2009 by a man wearing explosives in his underwear and a failed plot to send bombs concealed in printers.
The United States in turn has launched scores of drone strikes in Yemen, where the militant group thrives in vast, lawless areas largely outside of the government's control.
A drone strike in Yemen early Tuesday struck a vehicle, killing four suspected Al-Qaida militants "in a ball of fire,", a tribal source told AFP, adding that all four men were Yemeni.
It was not immediately clear if the strike was linked to the global alert. US officials rarely speak about the drone program.
Several US allies, including Britain, France, Germany and Norway have also announced closures of some of their missions in the region.
The US closure list includes 15 embassies or consulates that were shut on Sunday -- the fifteenth anniversary of Al-Qaida's attacks on US embassies in East Africa -- as well as four additional posts.
Lawmakers in Washington described the threat level as very serious, with some invoking the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, dubbed the intelligence "probably one of the most specific and credible threats I've seen, perhaps, since 9/11."