Asia-Pacific
US warns of attack threat to Sudan-Uganda flights
(Agencies)
Updated: 2010-01-09 17:47
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KHARTOUM: The United States has warned that "regional extremists" were planning an attack on Air Uganda flights between southern Sudan and Kampala.
The warning came amid heightened tensions follow the botched Christmas Day bombing attempt on a Detroit-bound US airliner blamed on a Nigerian man who US officials believe was trained by al Qaeda in Yemen.
The US Embassy in Khartoum did not name the potential attackers but has said in the past that terrorist groups were active in Sudan.
The United States stepped up security screenings of passengers travelling from or through Sudan and 13 other countries after the failed attack.
US embassy staff published a warning late on Friday on their website of "a potential threat against commercial aviation transiting between Juba, Sudan and Kampala, Uganda".
Juba is the capital of semi-autonomous southern Sudan.
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It added it was not clear whether the group had the ability to mount an attack but warned air passengers to be alert.
Security at Juba airport is notoriously lax. A Reuters witness said the only scanner in the airport was not working last week and security staff do not go beyond hand searches of luggage.
No one was immediately available for comment from Sudan's government on Saturday, a public holiday.
Air Uganda runs daily flights between Juba and Uganda's Entebbe airport.
Last year, the US embassy warned Islamic militants had threatened violence against Sudan's government and could target Western interests following the death of a suspected militant.
US aid official John Granville and his driver Abdelrahman Abbas Rahama were shot dead when returning from New Year celebrations in Khartoum in 2008. Four men described as Islamist extremists were sentenced to death over the attack.
Sudan, which hosted al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in the 1990s before expelling him, has been on a US list of state sponsors of terrorism since 1993.
Al Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri in 2007 criticised President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for letting international peacekeepers into the country's Darfur region and accused him of abandoning Islam to appease the United States.
US officials have acknowledged Sudan has been cooperative in sharing intelligence on militant groups since the September 11 attacks in 2001.
The Sudanese government has repeatedly denied al Qaeda has an active presence in Sudan.
