WASHINGTON — Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula is promising more small-scale attacks like its attempts to bomb two U.S.-bound cargo planes, which it likens to bleeding its enemy to death by a thousand cuts.
The editors of a special edition of the Yemeni-based group’s English on-line magazine, Inspire, boast that what they call Operation Hemorrhage was cheap, and easy, using common items that together with shipping, cost only $4,200 to carry out.
“It is such a good bargain for us to spread fear amongst the enemy and keep him on his toes in exchange of a few months of work and a few thousand bucks,” AQAP said in its online Inspire magazine, released on militant websites.
Alerted to the late October bomb plot by Saudi intelligence, security officials chased the packages across five countries, trying frantically over the following two days to prevent an explosion that could have come at any moment.
The pursuit showed that even when the world’s counterterrorism systems work, preventing an attack is often a terrifyingly close ordeal.
Full story: Al-Qaida says plane attack cost $4,200 – World news – Mideast/N. Africa – msnbc.com