Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula’s propaganda arm issued a new video encouraging U.S. jihadis to derail trains, The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) revealed Friday.
The video previews the upcoming release of the terrorist group’s magazine, which Boston bomber brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev infamously used. The video promises instructions on train derailment with devices “made from readily available materials,” terrorism expert Rita Katz noted on Twitter following the video’s release.
“The trailer highlights that derailments are simple to design using easily available materials, that such a planned attack can be hard to detect, and that the outcome can substantially damage to a country’s transportation sector and the Western economy in general,” MEMRI notes in its release.
The video even cites a 2004 U.S. Government Accountability Office report revealing that “one of the major problems with this vulnerability is that it is physically impossible to monitor every inch of railroad track at any given time. It just can’t be done. This leaves hundreds of miles of railroad open for terrorist attack.”
“Possibly the largest, and probably most obvious, vulnerabilities to railways is the sheer amount of railroad tracks around the country,” the same report claims. “There are over 100,000 miles of rail in the United States. The extensiveness of the infrastructure creates an infinite number of targets for terrorists.”
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