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US sure that more attacks are coming: Report

Dharam Shourie in New York

The United States and its allies are still intercepting communications among terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden's associates, and are convinced that more attacks are coming, intelligence sources in several countries have revealed.

While American officials have been warning of another attack, the foreign intelligence officials stress that their analysis is based on what their own agencies have gathered and not on the intelligence that they are getting from the US, a newspaper said.

Media reports over the past week quoted intelligence officials in six countries in West Asia and Europe as saying that they were unsure where to expect the attacks or whether they would be with explosives or with chemical or biological weapons.

But, they said, their intercepts had convinced them that a second and possibly a third wave of attacks were being planned.

There is no evidence yet linking the recent anthrax-tainted letters to Osama bin Laden, said intelligence officials from two European countries. But if the letters are Laden's work, then it is likely to be only the beginning of more attacks, the New York Times quoted them as saying.

Still, arrests in the US and the disruption of suspected terrorist plots abroad might have bought some time in the battle against terrorism, American officials said.

The paper said interpreting intercepted communications and sorting through all the rumours were a formidable challenge. One intercept before the September 11 attack was, according to two senior intelligence officials, the first warning of the strikes and it set off a scramble among American and other intelligence agencies.

In that call, Laden had advised his wife in Syria to come back to Afghanistan. That message, which was intercepted by the intelligence services of more than one country, was passed on to the US, officials from three countries said.

The US and its allies began looking at possible targets in the Persian Gulf, Europe "and in other corners of the world", a senior intelligence official said.

Now the US and its allies find themselves in a similar quandary. They know something is coming but not when or where. In the past, officials noted, there had been two years gap between the 1998 embassy bombings in east Africa and the attack on the destroyer Cole last year in Yemen.

But this time the follow-up attacks are likely to come much sooner because Laden had probably set them in motion before September 11, the officials added.

PTI

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