Frankrijk, Duitsland en Zweden middelpunt officiële waarschuwingen V.S. en Groot-Brittannië voor terroristische aanslagen (en)
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - France, Germany and Sweden are at the centre of official warnings by the US and the UK on the risk of a terrorist attack by Islamist groups in the run-up to Christmas.
The US State Department on Saturday (3 October) published a blanket Travel Alert for US citizens in Europe valid until 31 January based on "current information" about "al-Qaeda and affiliated organisations" and mentioning "subway and rail systems, as well as aviation and maritime services."
Speaking at a conference call with press on Sunday, senior State Department official Patrick Kennedy advised US travelers to register their whereabouts with US consulates, to avoid putting US stickers on their bags and to ensure that people do not overhear their conversations about holiday plans.
"We're not saying don't travel to Europe. We're not saying don't visit tourist, major tourist attractions or historic sites or monuments," he added, amid concern about potential flight and hotel cancellations in the run-up to the vacation season.
State Department spokesman Philip J Crowley told EUobserver the same day that the alert is linked to previous warnings in Germany and Sweden.
"We are issuing a caution to American citizens that is consistent with what European countries have done," he explained. "We have been in close co-ordination with European countries regarding this threat and advised them before we issued our travel alert."
The UK at the weekend also upgraded its terrorist threat level for Germany and France from "general" to "high" while leaving its domestic setting unchanged on "severe." "I would urge the public to report any suspicious activity to the police," foreign minister William Hague said in a statement.
Sweden officially raised its domestic threat level on Friday. France upgraded its level in mid-September but has not gone beyond the earlier warning in reaction to the US and UK alerts.
Germany has not changed its level so far. But German officials have briefed press in recent days that a German Islamist, Ahmad Sidiqi, told US interrogators at the Bagram base in Afghanistan that Osama bin Laden has put up the money for a strike on multiple European targets.
A spokesman for the Belgian interior ministry, Peter Mertens, told Agence France Press that Belgium is also keeping its threat level unchanged. The EU capital is this week hosting 31 prime ministers and heads of state from Europe and Asia at three back-to-back summits.
The French news agency reported that the US will give extra information to a scheduled meeting of EU interior ministers in Luxembourg on Thursday.
"We don't even like to talk about the threat of a Mumbai-type attack in Europe in order not to give people ideas, because it would be so easy," a source in the EU institutions told this website.
The Pakistani Taliban group Lashkar-e-Taiba in 2008 landed several boatloads of men armed with machine guns in Mumbai, India, who later opened fire on civilians going about their normal business in the city, killing over 150 people.