US extends embassy closings
7 Aug 2013 4:41 AM IST
United States extended embassy closures by a week in middle east and Africa as a precaution after an al-Qaida threat which US lawmakers said was the most serious in years. The state department said 19 US embassies and consulates would be closed through Saturday ‘out of an abundance of caution’ and that a number of them would have been closed anyway for most of the week due to Eid celebrations at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramzan.
The US initially closed 21 diplomatic posts for the day on Sunday. Four new diplomatic posts, in Madagascar, Burundi, Rwanda and Mauritius, were added to the closure list for the week. Last week, the state department issued a worldwide travel alert warning Americans that al-Qaida may be planning attacks in August, particularly in the middle east and north Africa. ‘There is an awful lot of chatter out there,’ US senator Saxby Chambliss, the top Republican on the Senate intelligence committee, said on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press.’
He said the ‘chatter’, communications among terrorism suspects about the planning of a possible attack, was ‘very reminiscent of what we saw pre-9/11.’
A National Security Agency surveillance programme that electronically collects communications on cellphones and emails, known as intercepts, had helped gather intelligence about this threat, Chambliss said. It was one of the NSA surveillance programs revealed by former spy agency
contractor Edward Snowden to media outlets.
Those programs ‘allow us to have the ability to gather this chatter,’ Chambliss said. ‘If we did not have these programmes then we simply wouldn’t be able to listen in on the bad guys.’
‘SERIOUS THREAT’
This is the most serious threat that I’ve seen in the last several years,’ Chambliss said. US military forces in the middle east region have been on a higher state of alert for the past several days because of the threat, a US official said on condition of anonymity.
The threat also has prompted some European countries to close their embassies in Yemen, home to an Al-Qaida affiliate that is considered one of the most dangerous, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.
Yemeni soldiers blocked roads around the US and British embassies in Sanaa while troops with automatic rifles stood outside the French Embassy.
The US initially closed 21 diplomatic posts for the day on Sunday. Four new diplomatic posts, in Madagascar, Burundi, Rwanda and Mauritius, were added to the closure list for the week. Last week, the state department issued a worldwide travel alert warning Americans that al-Qaida may be planning attacks in August, particularly in the middle east and north Africa. ‘There is an awful lot of chatter out there,’ US senator Saxby Chambliss, the top Republican on the Senate intelligence committee, said on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press.’
He said the ‘chatter’, communications among terrorism suspects about the planning of a possible attack, was ‘very reminiscent of what we saw pre-9/11.’
A National Security Agency surveillance programme that electronically collects communications on cellphones and emails, known as intercepts, had helped gather intelligence about this threat, Chambliss said. It was one of the NSA surveillance programs revealed by former spy agency
contractor Edward Snowden to media outlets.
Those programs ‘allow us to have the ability to gather this chatter,’ Chambliss said. ‘If we did not have these programmes then we simply wouldn’t be able to listen in on the bad guys.’
‘SERIOUS THREAT’
This is the most serious threat that I’ve seen in the last several years,’ Chambliss said. US military forces in the middle east region have been on a higher state of alert for the past several days because of the threat, a US official said on condition of anonymity.
The threat also has prompted some European countries to close their embassies in Yemen, home to an Al-Qaida affiliate that is considered one of the most dangerous, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.
Yemeni soldiers blocked roads around the US and British embassies in Sanaa while troops with automatic rifles stood outside the French Embassy.
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