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WASHINGTON, Sept 10: The US navy warned shippers on Tuesday of unconfirmed reports that Al Qaeda has planned attacks against oil tankers transiting the Gulf and the Horn of Africa.
In an advisory to commercial shippers, the navy’s Maritime Liaison Office in Bahrain said there was no indication an attack was imminent but that the threat should be taken seriously.
“According to unconfirmed reports circulating within the regional shipping community, the Al Qaeda terrorist group has planned attacks against oil tankers transiting the Arabian Gulf and Horn of Africa areas,” the notice said.
The warning came amid heightened security worldwide for Wednesday’s anniversary of the Sept 11 attacks.
Coalition forces were “alert to the potential threat” and were on patrol in the Gulf, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Oman, the advisory said.
“The US navy has no specific details on the timing or means of the planned attacks, and there are no indications than an attack is imminent. The threat should be regarded seriously,” it said.
The warning “substantiates previous indications of Al Qaeda intent to attack commercial shipping as a means of creating economic instability,” it said.
“Shipmasters should exercise extreme caution when transiting strategic chokepoints such as the Strait of Hormuz or Bab-el-Mandeb, or sailing in traditional high-threat areas such as along the Horn of Africa and other confined waters,” it said.
Navy spokesmen would not comment further on the advisory, but US officials noted that shipping has been a known Al Qaeda target in the past.
A US destroyer, the USS Cole, was struck and nearly sunk by a devastating suicide bombing that killed 17 sailors during a refuelling stop in the Yemeni port of Aden in Oct 2000.
In June, Moroccan authorities arrested members of an alleged Al Qaeda cell on suspicion of plotting attacks on NATO ships off Gibraltar with explosives-laden Zodiac boats.
“There have been a number of possible attacks on ships, both in that region (the Gulf) and elsewhere, so it may be just another one of these abundance of caution kind of things,” a US official said.
EMBASSIES CLOSED: The United States on Tuesday ordered its embassies in Indonesia and Malaysia to shut down over fears of an attack by supporters of Osama bin Laden.
The US ambassador said the Jakarta embassy and the American consulate in Indonesia’s second largest city, Surabaya, had been closed until further notice.
The US embassy in Malaysia would also be closed on Wednesday because of a “credible and specific threat”, an embassy spokesman said.
A statement from the embassy in Kuala Lumpur also advised American citizens “to be extremely cautious during the coming days”. Other American facilities across the region were on alert for attacks.
“The Al Qaeda network is still far from defeated,” the US ambassador told reporters. “And we’ve received another graphic example of that just the past few hours with the news...about a specific threat against our embassy in Jakarta and the consulate-general in Surabaya” which forced their closure.
He added that Indonesia was not alone as “...we know there are Al Qaeda cells elsewhere in the region”, but declined to say whether the latest threat had come specifically from the network.
A US embassy spokeswoman said a Jakarta memorial service planned to mark the Sept 11 attacks had been cancelled.
The Jakarta embassy was the focal point of several major protests last year over the US-led strikes on Afghanistan, with many of the protests spearheaded by radical Muslim groups.
The street outside the embassy appeared calm. Around a dozen lightly armed Indonesian police were stationed outside the compound, but it was possible to walk on the sidewalk in front of the embassy complex. Foreign tourists in the Indonesian capital said they had few concerns about possible hostility by Muslims.
Cameron Sumpter, 22, from Wellington, New Zealand, said he had experienced only one such incident, “when I met a young man who was wearing an Osama Bin Laden t-shirt in a local pub, and he was staring at me with a bit of contempt.
“But, nothing happened other than that,” he said.
ASIA REMEMBERS VICTIMS: As Americans prepared to mark the first anniversary of the attacks, the Asia-Pacific region mourned its own dead, the several hundred Indians, Bangladeshis, Japanese, Australians and other nationalities trapped in New York’s World Trade Center as its twin towers collapsed after strikes by hijacked airliners.
In Australia, where media have gone overboard with gory wall-to-wall replays of last year’s tragedy, one television network won praise for sticking with normal programming.
“We are getting a lot of viewers ringing in and saying thank you for not doing the blanket saturation coverage,” a spokeswoman said.—AFP/Reuters
