New Underwear Plane Bomb Plot Foiled By US
SKY News
11:01pm UK, Monday May 07, 2012
Osama bin Laden pictured watching TV in his house in Pakistan
An al Qaeda plot to blow up a US-bound aircraft using an underwear bomb has been foiled, American officials have said.
The plan, around the first anniversary of Osama bin Laden's killing, involved a sophisticated version of the device that failed to detonate on board a plane heading to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, they added.
The CIA thwarted the latest plan by al Qaeda's branch in Yemen and the new device has been recovered.
The FBI is examining the bomb to see whether it could have passed through airport security and brought down an aircraft, officials said.
They said the device did not contain metal, which means it probably could have passed through an airport metal detector.
But it was not clear whether new body scanners used in many airports would have detected it.
The would-be suicide bomber was told to buy a ticket on the airliner of his choosing and decide the timing of the attack.
But he had not yet picked a target or bought his ticket when the CIA stepped in and seized the bomb, officials added.
It was not immediately clear what happened to him.
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