JERUSALEM, Aug 5: Israel ordered four cruise ships headed for Turkey with 3,500 Israeli passengers to change course to other ports on Friday because of a security threat, officials said. Israel Radio said a ‘terror alert’ prompted Transportation Minister Meir Sheetrit to instruct the Israeli-flag vessels sailing from Haifa to stay away from the Turkish port of Alanya, where they had been due to arrive later in the day.

“There was a specific threat and because of warnings from Israeli and Turkish security services, the minister took the decision to order the ships not to dock in Alanya and to disperse to other ports,” Israeli transportation ministry spokeswoman Ora Salomon said. A security source in Cyprus said two of the vessels, the Iris and Jasmine, operated by Haifa-based Manos Cruises, were diverted to the Cypriot port of Limassol ‘because they are fearing a terrorist attack on Alanya’.

The two ships, carrying 550 passengers each, were escorted under police guard to Limassol shortly before 1600 GMT. Extra police had been called in. A port source said the vessels would be spending the night there, something he said was highly unusual for Israeli vessels.

The other two ships involved were the Dream Princess liner, with a capacity of 1,257 passengers, and the Magic 1. A Cypriot government source said a third vessel, thought to be the Dream Princess, was headed towards the island’s second port in Larnaca.

A Turkish official confirmed that the port of Alanya had been expecting four Israeli ships on Friday and they had not arrived, but said nothing about them being diverted by a threat.

A senior Istanbul policeman told the Vatan newspaper recently that Turkey expected a fresh attack from Al Qaeda before November. He said police were monitoring 1,000 people in Istanbul believed to have links to Al Qaeda.

Nov 2003 bombings of two synagogues, the British consulate and the local branch of a British bank in Istanbul, attacks claimed by a local cell of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network, killed more than 60 people.

On Wednesday, two women were killed in an explosion in a suburb of Istanbul. Turkish media blamed Kurdish militants for the blast, though police have not confirmed the reports.

Last month, five people were killed in a bomb blast in a mini-bus in the Aegean resort of Kusadasi in an attack also blamed on Kurdish militants. —Reuters