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NY jittery after 'threats'
11/08/2007 22:11 - (SA)
New York - New York increased security in Manhattan after a website carried reports that Islamic militants intended to attack the city with a radiological device, police said on Saturday.
Police spokesperson Brian Sessa said that authorities were using radiological monitoring equipment at the city's bridges and tunnels after the threat appeared on the Israeli website Debka.com.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the precautionary measures were no different from other counter-terrorist activity in New York since the September 11 attacks of 2001 and that the city's security level was unchanged at "orange."
He said the New York Police Department began to increase security late on Friday to guard against what he described as an "unverified threat."
More chatter
"These actions are like those that the NYPD takes every day - precautions against potential but unconfirmed threats that may never materialise.
"As New Yorkers, we have gone about our lives even with the daily threat level at 'orange' every day since September 11, 2001.
"That threat level has not changed because of this unverified threat, and we shouldn't let anyone terrorise us by spreading fear," he added.
The Debka report said that the website had monitored "a rush of electronic chatter on al-Qaeda sites on Thursday."
The messages said that attacks would be carried out "by means of trucks loaded with radioactive material against America's biggest city and financial nerve centre," the website reported.
Another message reportedly mentioned New York, Los Angeles and Miami as targets.
"The attack, with Allah's help, will cause an economic meltdown, many dead, and a financial crisis on a scale that compels the United States to pull its military forces out of many parts of the world, including Iraq," it added.
Debka's Giora Shamis told the Israeli Yediot Aharonot newspaper: "We never know if the threat is real or not, but if you follow these publications for years, you can get a feel for whether the threat is serious or not.
"This time this threat seemed - due to the intensiveness of the exchange of messages - to be more serious than others."
CNN quoted Federal Bureau of Investigation spokesperson Richard Kolko as saying the purported threat was of "low credibility." But he said the FBI was working with the Department of Homeland Security to share it with local authorities.
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Russ Knocke said, "We consider this threat to be unsubstantiated," according to CNN.
"There continues to be no credible or specific information telling us of an imminent threat to the homeland," Knocke said.
"There is no substantial uptick in chatter. We are hearing more because we are better at collecting than we were in the summer of 2001."
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