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Peter Goodspeed, National Post Published: Tuesday, January 20, 2009
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Seven years after they transformed George W. Bush's presidency, al-Qaeda terrorists are pushing to the top of his successor's priority list.
The very day Barack Obama was sworn in as President, warning Americans "our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred," there were reports an al-Qaeda affiliate recently abandoned a training camp in Algeria after 40 terrorists died from being exposed to the plague during a biological weapons test.
The report, which first surfaced in the British tabloid newspaper The Sun, claims members of al-Qaeda in the Land of the Maghreb (AQLIM) hurriedly abandoned their cave hideouts in Tizi Ouzou province, 150 kilometres east of the Algerian capital Algiers, after being exposed to plague bacteria.
The newspaper said they apparently became infected while experimenting with biological weapons.
- Algerian security forces discovered the body of a dead terrorist alongside a road near the abandoned hideout.
- U.S. intelligence officials, speaking anonymously to the Washington Times newspaper on Tuesday, could only confirm the sudden base closure after an unconventional weapons test went wrong.
- The officials said they intercepted an urgent communication in early January between the AQIM leadership and al-Qaeda's top leaders in the tribal region of Pakistan.
- The Algerian terrorists said they were abandoning and sealing off a training area after a leak of a chemical or biological substance.
There are two types of plague. Bubonic plague, which is spread by bites from infected rat fleas, killed a third of Europe's population in the 14th century but can now be treated with antibiotics.
Pneumonic plague is less common but more deadly. It is spread, like the flu, by airborne bacteria, and can be inhaled and transmitted between humans without the involvement of animals or fleas.
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