Report: Al-Qaida may attempt more hijackings

Al-Qaida suicide squads may try to hijack commercial airliners in the US, Europe or Australia this summer, possibly using “common items carried by travellers, such as cameras modified as weapons”, it was reported today.

The Washington Post said the warning was included in an urgent memo sent by the Transportation Security Administration to all American airlines and airport security managers last weekend.

“The plan may involve the use of five-man teams, each of which would attempt to seize control of a commercial aircraft either shortly after take-off or shortly before landing,” the memo said. “This type of operation would preclude the need for flight-trained hijackers.”

It was drawn from recent intelligence reports that detail the most specific terror plots involving passenger aircraft in the US since September 11, 2001.

President George Bush was briefed on the hijack threat yesterday by CIA Director George Tenet, the newspaper said.

Officials said the information came from one or more senior al-Qaida prisoners and was corroborated by other intelligence. The memo specifically cited “Islamic extremists” as the planners of the possible attacks.

While the information sent to the airlines is unusually specific, the intelligence community remains somewhat wary that the alleged plot could be a feint by al-Qaida to divert attention from a real threat elsewhere.

“That possibility is something we are looking at right now,” one Homeland Security Department official told the paper. But, he said, the threat to airliners “is consistent with previous al-Qaida methods of returning to previous places of attacks” after taking time to size up altered security.