- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The
bombings of a popular nightclub strip in the Indonesian resort island of
Bali were conducted by a "sophisticated" terrorist group because
of the large amount of high explosives used and the coordination of the
attacks, a U.S. intelligence official said on Monday.
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- That is why U.S. intelligence agencies believe the Saturday
night bombings of an area frequented by foreign tourists was probably the
work of a group linked to al Qaeda which would have the capability of striking
that type of blow. More than 180 people were killed in the attacks.
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- "We haven't come to any final conclusions, but it's
clearly the work of a sophisticated terrorist organization of which there
are only a few, there are some in that region that are associated with
al Qaeda like JI (Jemaah Islamiah)," a U.S. intelligence official
told Reuters.
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- "There were near simultaneous explosions designed
to inflict the greatest amount of casualties on innocent people,"
the official said.
-
- Al Qaeda has been blamed for coordinated attacks against
Western targets such as the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania
and Kenya, and the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide attacks that used four hijacked
planes as weapons.
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- The network has also been linked to the USS Cole bombing
in 2000 when a small boat carrying explosives blew up alongside the U.S.
destroyer off Yemen, gouging a huge hole in its side.
-
- U.S. intelligence agencies are also analyzing whether
the Bali bombings were linked in some way to recent shooting deaths of
U.S. Marines in Kuwait and an explosion at a French tanker off the coast
of Yemen.
-
- The speculation was that they could all be the work of
independent terror cells responding to a call by al Qaeda leaders for increased
action, officials said.
-
- Qatar's al Jazeera television has recently broadcast
audiotapes of Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahri,
as well as a statement the station said was faxed that carried bin Laden's
signature. The messages called on Muslims to conduct war against the United
States and Israel.
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- U.S. intelligence officials said the authenticity of
the latest reported bin Laden statement had not been determined. U.S. intelligence
agencies had earlier determined the audiotapes were probably genuine. The
one by Zawahri was made in recent months, but the time frame for the one
made by bin Laden could not be determined, they said.
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- The al Qaeda messages broadcast on Jazeera, along with
other electronic communications picked up by U.S. intelligence agencies,
have shown the type of increased "chatter" among terrorist suspects
that have preceded past attacks, said Sen. Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican.
-
- "Most of the time there have been terrorist attacks
immediately after a lot of signal traffic," Shelby, vice chairman
of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said.
-
- That happened before the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in
Africa, the USS Cole attack and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United
States, he said.
-
- "These are not isolated incidents," Shelby
said of the recent attacks in Bali, Kuwait and Yemen. "They are measured,
they are planned, they are part of the terrorist attacks, and there will
be more," he told Reuters.
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