U.K. official: Aircraft was likely target of attack
Baku, October 30 (AZERTAC). A package discovered at the United Kingdom`s East Midlands airport contained "viable explosives," and could have brought down the aircraft carrying it upon detonation, British Home Secretary Theresa May said Saturday.
The preliminary U.K. investigation indicates that the target may have been an aircraft, May said, but authorities do not believe the perpetrators would have known the location of the device when they detonated it.
May added that there is no indication of any other attack on British soil, and the threat level in the United Kingdom remains unchanged and at severe threat level.
Earlier Saturday, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano told CNN Saturday that the plan to send explosives on a flight to the United States has the "hallmarks of al Qaeda,"
"We know that the perpetrators of this -- and it has the hallmarks of al Qaeda, the AQAP -- they are constantly trying things to test our system," she said, referring to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
The suspected terror plot involved two suspicious packages found abroad, addressed to Jewish organizations in the United States, that contained considerable amounts of explosive material.
President Barack Obama confirmed that the packages -- intercepted in the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates -- originated in Yemen, the stronghold of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
"We also know that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula ... continues to plan attacks against our homeland, our citizens, and our friends and allies," he said during a press briefing on the incident Friday.
"Initial examination of those packages has determined they do apparently contain explosive material," Obama said.
The devices were "professionally" loaded and connected using an electric circuit to a mobile phone chip tucked in a printer, Dubai police told WAM, the official news agency for the United Arab Emirates.
They were packed in toner cartridges and designed to be detonated by a cell phone, a source close to the investigation told CNN.
Police said they were tipped off about the possibility of an explosive device in postal packages onboard a FedEx flight from Yemen headed to Dubai.
The Saudi government provided U.S. officials with tracking numbers of the two packages, enabling quick tracing to the United Kingdom and Dubai, a source told CNN.
"What happened is you have great information sharing from the Saudis," Napolitano said Saturday. "We were immediately able to work across the globe to get these packages segregated."
Pressed by CNN`s T.J. Holmes on whether the United States would have known about the plot had it not been for the Saudis, she said, "We certainly got the heads-up from the Saudis."
"I don`t want to go into other intelligence," she said. "That would be inappropriate. I don`t play the `what if` game. What if the Saudis hadn`t told us? We share information. We share information like this across the globe. The ability for passengers to travel safely is a global issue and all countries of the world need to be involved here."
Mohammed Albasha, a Yemen Embassy spokesman in Washington, said no UPS or FedEx flights take off or land in Yemen. He said his government is investigating, but it was too early to speculate or reach any conclusions.
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