Al-Qaeda is going ahead to stage massive Mumbai-style attacks in American and European cities, inspite of Western security agencies sounding a full alert, top officals have warned.
Intelligence information indicate that al-Qaeda had already started planning to launch Mumbai-style attacks in the US, August Hanning, a former head of Germany's foreign intelligence service, told the CNN in an interview.
Soon after the Mumbai terrorist attack, launched by the Pakistani-based terrorist outfits which were supported by ISI, that killed 166 people, including six American nationals, in November 2008, intelligence and police officials in the US had warned that such a terrorist attack would be emulated by al-Qaeda and other global terrorist outfits.
"We have got information that they have planned or are planning a plot like the Mumbai plot in Europe and the United States," Hanning, who retired late last year as state secretary in Germany's interior ministry, told CNN.
The revelation is the most concrete indication yet that al-Qaeda is planning mass casualty gun attacks on US soil.
A senior US counter-terrorism official told CNN that US intelligence agencies have for some time been concerned that al-Qaeda would attempt to replicate aspects of the 2008 Mumbai attack on US soil.
"The assumption has been that they would make plans to do this and the potential threat is being treated very seriously," the official told CNN.
The news channel said the capture of Ahmed Sidiqi, a militant from the German port city of Hamburg, in Afghanistan in July, helped Western intelligence uncover the conspiracy, according to European and US counter-terrorism officials. Sidiqi is currently being held in American custody at Bagram air force base in Afghanistan.
CNN said Western intelligence agencies also learned that Ilyas Kashmiri, a senior al-Qaeda operative, had a planning role in the plot. According to US counter-terrorism officials, Osama bin Laden himself signed off on the plot. Kashmiri was also involved in the Mumbai terrorist attack.
"[Kashmiri] knows our situation in Germany and therefore he is dangerous," Hanning told CNN.
"Our estimate is 220 people who have left Germany for training purposes in Pakistan, being trained in terrorist techniques and nearly half of them have come back to Germany and that has been the real threat for us. ... We know that they still have contact with these dangerous groups in Pakistan," he told CNN.
