What’s behind timing of terror threat
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On Friday the U.S. State Department issued a worldwide travel alert because of an unspecified al Qaeda threat. The location of that threat, the department said in a bulletin, is “particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, and possibly occurring in or emanating from the Arabian Peninsula.” As a result, an unprecedented 22 embassies and consulates in 17 countries in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia closed for a day on Sunday.
Sunday is also the 27th day of Ramadan and a particularly holy day for the world’s Muslims as it is the “Night of Power,” when the first verses of the Koran were revealed to the Prophet Mohammed.
It is also seen by al Qaeda’s would-be martyrs as a particularly auspicious day to die.
Al Qaeda and aligned organizations have a long history of attacking U.S. embassies and consulates, beginning in 1998 with the bombings of the embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, which killed more than 200, and including, most recently, the storming of the U.S. government facility in Benghazi, Libya, on the 11th anniversary of 9/11 last year.
For al Qaeda, these diplomatic compounds are attractive targets because they symbolize American power and because their locations are widely known. Indeed, several of the embassies and consulates closed on Sunday have been attacked by al Qaeda and affiliated groups before.
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