Explosive packages reflect new Yemen terror threat

SAN'A, Yemen (AP) - The discovery of two explosive-laden packages sent from Yemen and aimed at U.S. and Western interests represents a new escalation in the terror threat emanating from this violence-wracked, poverty-stricken Mideast country.

President Barack Obama stopped short of linking the failed plot to al-Qaida in Yemen, but U.S. officials said privately they were increasingly confident that was the source. Obama's counterterrorism adviser John Brennan called the Yemeni wing the most active al-Qaida franchise.

Militants from the terror network have been building up their presence for several years in this nation of 23 million people, finding refuge with tribes in the remote mountain ranges where the government has little control.

But the Yemeni-based al-Qaida offshoot rose to the fore of U.S. concern in December, when it allegedly masterminded a failed Christmas Day attempt to blow up a passenger jet as it landed in Detroit.

The Obama administration branded the group a global threat and has dramatically stepped up its funding of the Yemeni government to uproot it although there has been little visible progress. Friday's discovery of two explosive packages addressed to Chicago-area synagogues and packed aboard cargo jets from Yemen was certain to heighten those fears.

Obama called the coordinated attacks a "credible terrorist threat." Preliminary tests indicated the packages contained the powerful industrial explosive PETN, the same chemical used in the Christmas attempt as well as shoe bomber Richard Reid's effort to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight in 2001, U.S. officials said.

Obama told reporters in Washington that the packages, which were found in England and Dubai, originated in Yemen. He said the group known officially as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula "continues to plan attacks against our homeland, our citizens, and our friends and allies," although he did not directly blame them in the latest attack.

Around 50 elite U.S. military experts are in the country training Yemeni counterterrorism forces - a number that has doubled over the past year. Washington is funneling some $150 million in military assistance to Yemen this year for helicopters, planes and other equipment, along with a similar amount for humanitarian and development aid. San'a says its troops are fanned out around the country, hunting for militants.

Al-Qaida in Yemen's top leadership also remains largely intact, despite airstrikes that Yemeni officials have said include either coordination from the United States or direct U.S. involvement. American officials have refused to confirm that U.S. planes carried out the strikes.

The hunt for Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born radical Islamic cleric who Washington says has become a leader in the group, also may have gone cold. The governor of Shabwa province, where al-Awlaki is believed to be hiding in the mountains, told The Associated Press he hasn't been sighted in two months and cast doubt whether the cleric was still in the province.

The United States sees al-Awlaki as the most notorious English-speaking advocate of terrorism directed at America, with a dangerously strong appeal to Muslims in the West, and Washington has put him on a list of militants to kill or capture. U.S. investigators say e-mails link him to the Army psychiatrist accused of last year's killings at Fort Hood, Texas, and that he helped prepare Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, accused in the Christmas airline bombing attempt.