Posted on 04/19/2004 8:50:10 PM PDT by Anti-Bubba182
AL-QAEDA LINKED terrorists were plotting to detonate a large-scale chemical bomb in Jordan that could have killed up to 20,000 people, plus also attack the US embassy and Prime Minister's office with poison gas, officials said yesterday.
Officials close to the investigation said several terror suspects arrested in Jordan last month had confessed that the plots were hatched by Jordanian militant Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi, thought to be a close associate of al-Qaeda boss Osama bin Laden.
The officials said the terrorist cell was planning to attack Jordan's secret service, the General Intelligence Department, with a chemical bomb that would have killed up to 20,000 people and caused large-scale destruction within 1km.
Jordan's King Abdullah II said in a letter of thanks published this week to his intelligence chief, General Saad Kheir, that the arrests of the terror cell members had "saved thousands of lives".
Had the chemical bomb plot not been uncovered, King Abdullah wrote, Jordan would have seen "a crime that would have been unprecedented in the country in terms of the size of explosives mounted on the vehicles and the methods of carrying out the attacks or the civilian locations chosen".
Yesterday, the officials said the terror cell was also apparently planning to carry out simultaneous poison-gas attacks against foreign diplomatic missions, including the heavily fortified US embassy in Amman, vital Jordanian public establishments such as the Prime Minister's office and unspecified civilian targets.
They declined to elaborate, but stressed the plot had been foiled with the arrests late last month and earlier this month of an unspecified number of terrorist suspects.
Jordanian officials say the arrests occurred after suspected militants entered Jordan from neighbouring Syria in at least three vehicles filled with explosives, detonators and raw material to be used in bomb-making.
Syrian officials have denied these claims.
Among those arrested last week were two Palestinian militants identified as Suleiman Darweesh and Muwafaq Adwan, thought to be close associates of al-Zarqawi.
Another Palestinian militant, Azmi al-Jayoussi, is thought to be at large.
The Associated Press
This is another report that mentions poison gas. Maybe this story has legs. It will huge if it does.
We don't know what "poison gas" it was for sure.
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