Militants from the al-Qaeda network, blamed for September 11 suicide attacks in the United States, may now be targeting US apartment buildings, an FBI official said. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has received information that al-Qaeda leaders had discussed a possible plan to rent apartment units in the United States and plant explosives there, FBI spokeswoman Debra Weierman said on Saturday. “We have no indication that this proposed plan went beyond the discussion stage,” Weierman said. “But in an abundance of caution we notified our field offices and the joint terrorism task force last week.” Weierman described the reports about al-Qaeda's possible plans to attack apartment complexes as unsubstantiated and uncorroborated and said that they gave no clue where the targeted building were located.
US officials and experts denied on Saturday that the administration of US President George W Bush planned to raise the national security alert level, which currently remains at yellow, or elevated.
“There are serious threats that remain,” White House spokeswoman Anne Womack said. “We doing our best to collect the information.”
She said that she could not comment on specific intelligence information from the central intelligence agency about activities of the al-Qaeda militant network.
But intelligence specialists, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that there has been an increase in message traffic among al-Qaeda cells in recent weeks.
Bureau Report