London: Documents found on the body of the al-Qaeda’s most senior operative in East Africa revealed that that terrorists were planning attacks on two posh London hotels, an exclusive private school, and two Jewish neighborhoods in the city, media reported on Wednesday.
The documents, obtained by Toronto star, were discovered in the bullet-ridden truck of Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, a former FBI “Most Wanted” criminal who was killed by Somali forces in June 2011.
The cache of intelligence revealed that Al Qaeda’s Somali-based fighters had been planning to fire bomb and gun down guests at the Ritz and Dorchester hotels in London.
“The plan is to hit the hotel when it’s fully booked to ensure maximum casualties,” one document said.
The plot included two scenarios: Setting the first three floors of the hotels on fire and then blocking the exits, or activating the hotels’ fire alarms and as guests emerged, attackers would “shower them with petrol bombs and gunfire.”
In a document titled “International Operations,” the group stated its “objectives are to strike London with low-cost operations that would cause a heavy blow amongst the hierarchy and Jewish communities.”
The terror group also had aspirations of striking the private boarding school Eton College as students and parents arrived on opening day. Another plan included an attack on the London enclaves of Stamford Hill and Golders Green, which are populated with “tens of thousands of Jews crammed in a small area,” according to the documents.
It was unclear who authored the documents and other recovered intelligence, including video clips of apparent Al Qaeda fighters undergoing training in Somalia.
There was also nothing in the documents that revealed the plans were more than “aspirational” the Toronto Star reported.
Before his death last year, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed was one of the most wanted men in Africa and U.S. authorities had put a $5 million bounty on his head. He was responsible for at least 224 deaths in the American Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and was linked to several other high-profile attacks in Africa.
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