WASHINGTON — A new threat of coming attacks, apparently from Osama bin Laden’s top aide, and recent killings of American soldiers in Kuwait and the Philippines have U.S. officials worried that a revitalized al-Qaida may be launching a new terrorism campaign.
One Marine was killed and a second injured Tuesday when two assailants in a pickup truck opened fire during a military exercise on an island off Kuwait City. Marines shot the pair dead. They were later identified as Kuwaitis. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher on Wednesday called the incident a terrorist attack.
In what could be a related incident, a U.S. soldier fired Wednesday at the driver of a civilian vehicle after one of its two occupants pointed a weapon at the soldier’s Humvee, said Marine Corps Maj. Rob Riggle, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command. The incident took place on Highway 80 north of Camp Doha, where American forces in Kuwait are based. U.S. and Kuwaiti officials are investigating, Riggle said.
On Oct. 2, an American Green Beret assigned to train Filipino troops in counterterrorism techniques was among three people who were killed in a bombing at a market in the Philippine city of Zamboanga. The bomb was believed to have been set by guerrillas of the Abu Sayyaf group, a Muslim extremist band linked to al-Qaida.
Also feeding those fears was Sunday’s suspected bombing of a French-owned oil tanker off Yemen and a sharp rise in intelligence reports indicating that al-Qaida could be aiming to hit “accessible economic targets” in America or elsewhere, said a U.S. intelligence official, who requested anonymity.
Such targets could include oil tankers and loading facilities in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere in the Middle East, and symbolic targets such as the New York Stock Exchange, the Federal Reserve in Washington or the Chicago Board of Trade, the official said. There is no intelligence to indicate that any of those has been targeted, however, the official said.
New strikes by bin Laden’s followers could deal fresh blows to the sputtering U.S. economy, especially if they disrupt vital petroleum supplies.
American officials said Wednesday that voice recordings received by The Associated Press in London and the al Jazeera television station in Qatar this week almost certainly were made within the last few months by Ayman al Zawahiri, an Egyptian who has been bin Laden’s closest aide and spiritual adviser.
“It’s probably (Zawahiri),” said an American official with knowledge of preliminary U.S. government analyses of the recordings.
If genuine, the recordings would prove that Zawahiri, 51, has eluded U.S.-led military operations in Afghanistan, and could mean that bin Laden did too, because the two were virtually inseparable. No firm evidence of bin Laden’s survival has surfaced since the United States heavily bombed his Afghan mountain stronghold of Tora Bora last December, though some reports suggest he remains in hiding in the region.
The recordings “most likely mean that both jokers are still alive,” said the U.S. intelligence official. But a second U.S. intelligence official said the recordings could indicate that Zawahiri had taken command of al-Qaida because bin Laden was dead or incapacitated.