Worldwide Al Qaeda terror alert linked to mass jail breakouts freeing 1,500 prisoners



Inmates escaped from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the al-Kwyfah facility in Libya and a number of other jails

Detectives fear they intend to hit British and other Western targets around the festival of Eid – which takes place this week



UK closes embassy in Yemen after receiving tip-off that Al Qaeda was planning to attack a Western embassy



Interpol has linked a worldwide Al Qaeda terror warning to a series of jailbreaks that have freed more than 1,500 suspected terrorists in the last fortnight.



Detectives fear that inmates who escaped from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, the al-Kwyfah facility in Libya and a number of other jails intend to hit British and other Western targets around the festival of Eid – which takes place this week.



The Foreign Office has announced the temporary closure of the embassy in Yemen after receiving a tip-off that Al Qaeda was planning to attack a Western embassy there.



Breakouts: 1,500 suspected terrorists have escaped from prisons including Abu Ghraib iin Iraq (pictured) in the last fortnight

France, Germany and the United States are also closing their embassies in the country, and the US is also shutting 21 others, most of them in the Middle East.

The intelligence indicating a threat to Western embassies in the Arabian peninsula is believed to have come from intercepted communications, though this has not been publicly disclosed.



The British embassies in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq will remain open but staff have been advised to ‘exercise extravigilance’.



Interpol suspects Al Qaeda staged the jailbreaks as part of a major recruitment drive. The agency has asked its 190 member states for assistance in establishing whether they were ‘co-ordinated or linked’.



Britain has temporarily closed its embassy in Yemen after receiving a tip-off that Al-Qaeda was planning to attack a Western Embassy there (file picture)

Interpol’s warning was echoed by the US, which yesterday warned its citizens in the Muslim world to take security precautions – the first such alert since the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in 2001.



Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey said: ‘There is a significant threat stream and we’re reacting to it. The threat is more specific than previous ones and the intent is to attack Western, not just US interests.’



It is with this in mind that the Foreign Office said it was closing the embassy in San’a today and tomorrow. The embassy has also recently been operating with a reduced staff for the same reason.

