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| Southeast Asia |
| JI may use crude nuclear device against SE Asian shipping lanes |
| 2004-03-31 |
| Terrorists could be planning to attack South-East Asia's busiest shipping lanes with a "crude nuclear device," Australian authorities warned in a report obtained yesterday. Over a quarter of the world's trade and half of its oil passes through the Straits of Malacca and the Singapore Strait. It also said al-Qaeda-linked regional terror network Jemaah Islamiah continued to thrive despite the arrest of 200 suspected members and appeared to be pursuing terror training and links with groups from the Philippines to Pakistan. "The overall picture ... is that South-East Asia remains a front line in the fight against terrorism. More attacks that threaten the safety and security of regional communities are inevitable," said an Australian government report. Australian officials distributed the report at an anti-terrorism conference in Manila focusing on transport security and organised by the ASEAN Regional Forum, Asia's largest security forum that also includes the United States, Britain and other Western nations. The report warned waterways could be targeted in an attack using "a crude nuclear explosive device or radiological bomb." "There is clear evidence of al-Qaeda's interest in attacking economic assets as a means of undermining the global economy, including attacks against shipping," the report said. It did not detail the evidence. "Despite the degradation it has suffered as an operational network, it retains an organisational structure, a determined approach to recruitment and training and a capacity to inflict further serious attacks in a number of regional countries," the report said. The arrests, including last year's capture in Thailand of Riduan Isamuddin, also known as Hambali, and heightened security cooperation, had made it harder for Jemaah Islamiah to stage large-scale attacks. Its decision-making has also been decentralised, making future attacks more varied, its scope wider and harder to predict, the report said. One indication that the group was determined to survive was its effort to link up with organisations beyond South-East Asia, the report said, citing the discovery of a Jemaah Islamiah unit, identified as the al-Ghuraba cell, in Karachi, Pakistan, last year. The cell, composed of Malaysians, Indonesians and Singaporeans, was established to train future religious and military leaders, it said. Another Pakistan-based terror group, the Lashkar-e-Taiba, has also been linked to the Karachi cell, the report said. It said there were indications that Jemaah Islamiah was working with extremist groups in the southern Philippines "to the point of sharing training facilities and operational expertise." |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #8 Jews lied to President Bush about WMD and now they say that he lied. BTW, Rantburg is a Zionist propaganda BBS that censors truth while Americans die in Iraq on basis of Jewish lies. |
| Posted by: Jason TROLL 2004-03-31 7:14:12 AM |
| #7 What a crock. Firstly, WHAT would they blow up? A ship that would sink promptly as the currents absorb, dilute, and carry away the radioactive materials? JI would not waste a nuke on a ship when they could smuggle it in and set it off in a city. These are TERRORISTS, people, who TERRORIZE citizens, not ships. |
| Posted by: Ptah 2004-03-31 11:43:43 AM |
| #6 I agree with Grunter. LNG rail cars are also a huge potential problem. They're a lot more dangerous than many other things the leftists protest against being transported through residential areas. |
| Posted by: Spot 2004-03-31 9:07:21 AM |
| #5 I think the headline should read: "JI may use very, very, very crude nuclear device against SE Asian shipping lanes" Most logical outcome of this (If real and not the usual jihadi bragado): The worlds first nulear "work-accident". |
| Posted by: Evert Visser in NL 2004-03-31 6:58:17 AM |
| #4 Oh, China will surely love that! Weren't they rattling sabres at US/Japan recently about the Straits of Malacca???? |
| Posted by: Anonymous2U 2004-03-31 3:19:35 AM |
| #3 The greatest danger on the sea (IMO) is not nuclear- it is the hijacking of an LNG carrier and exploding it in a seaport. There is an NOAA report (the Quest Report) which estimates a 5m hole in an LNG tank with a wind speed of 1.5m/second would cause a fire 2.5 miles in diameter with sufficient radiant heat to ignite fires well beyond that. Consider the effect of rupturing all four tanks at once. I am sure AQ has. |
| Posted by: Grunter 2004-03-31 3:08:07 AM |
| #2 Anyone think it's related to this? |
| Posted by: Pete Stanley 2004-03-31 2:41:09 AM |
| #1 As I see it, two possible outcomes: 1. If it even looks like these guys are trying something, look for the USN, the RAN, the JNSDF, the Singaporeans, and the RN to get back into the fun forthwith. Anything that doesn't look (pardon the expression)kosher will get shredded. 2. Jihadis set of bomb and say, "Look! We have contaminated this chunk of ocean...and..you..are ..just...sailing...around it.....damn." Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2004-03-31 1:36:45 AM |