UK on alert for women bombers

As the official threat level across Britain was raised to “severe”, airport security staff have been warned to look out for the women, who are believed to have direct links with an Al Qaeda cell in Yemen.

The women are thought to be travelling on western passports and do not have an Arab appearance, making them harder to detect. It is feared they could be carrying the same explosive material that Yemen-trained bomber Umar Abdulmutallab, who studied in London, failed to detonate properly when he tried to down a passenger jet over Detroit on Christmas Day.

Former White House counter terrorism official Richard Clarke warned last night  that Al Qaeda have “trained women” for a major operation.

Home Secretary Alan Johnson warned people to be extra vigilant. The Sunday Express has been told his decision to raise the threat level was made after FBI agents handed over a dossier of information to British intelligence.

Now a huge security operation led by Scotland Yard is under way to protect US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Afghan president Hamid Karzai and Yemeni prime minister Ali Mujawar, all hated enemies of Al Qaeda.

They are expected to fly to Britain on Tuesday in preparation for what will be the most significant anti-terror summit in years. High-ranking officials from 17 other countries will attend. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will also be at the conference, hosted by Gordon Brown, to consider ways of defeating Al Qaeda in Yemen and Afghanistan.

Scotland Yard’s counter terrorism unit is working flat out because they know the leaders face three days of constant threats from home-grown terrorists and others travelling in from abroad at locations in central London which are uncomfortably near royal palaces.

On Wednesday conference delegates will discuss the tense situation in Yemen at Lancaster House, just off the The Mall near Clarence House and Buckingham Palace.

The next day the agenda changes to Afghanistan, where 250 British soldiers have died fighting the Taliban. On Friday, as world leaders fly out, Tony Blair faces the Chilcot inquiry at the Queen Elizabeth II conference centre opposite the Commons. Huge anti-war demonstrations are expected to bring that part of London to a standstill.

Patrick Mercer, Tory chairman of the Commons counter-terrorism sub-committee, said FBI agents based in London had spotted trends from a series of plots and attacks with links to the UK and to Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula.

He said last night: “It started in early November with a failed bomb attack on an airliner coming out of Mogadishu in Somalia, then the Fort Hood shootings in Texas, then the failed attempt on the New York underground which had British links, then the Christmas Day plot and then the killing of the CIA agents in Kost in Afghanistan."

"The reason they have put up the terror threat is at the insistence of FBI agents working in the UK who have said that the threat from British-origin terrorists – I don’t know if they mean Yemenis or Pakistanis but frankly I don’t think it matters – is high at the moment. A big hit in the next week would work terribly well for them. A lot of those attacks were UK-connected and if Richard Clarke is correct then it’s almost certainly aircraft-connected, it’s certainly UK-connected and it’s certainly Yemeni inspired."

“They will try to do something around a significant date or event, which is why they tried to attack on Christmas Day. The one they were really gearing up for was the start of the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York but now they’ve got an even better one.”

Khalid Mohammed is accused of being the mastermind behind the September 11 attacks. His trial is due to start soon.