Nine years after the 9/11 attacks, the US faces threat of more home grown terror assaults, including prospects of suicide bombings and assassinations of top leaders, apart from Mumbai-style strikes, a leading research group here has warned.
The fact that American citizens engaged in suicide operations in Somalia raises the possibility that such attacks could start taking place in the United States itself, the Bipartisan Policy Centre's National Security Preparedness Group said in a 42-page report.
"To discount this possibility would be to ignore the lessons of the British experience," it said.
Authored by Peter Bergen and Bruce Hoffman, the report titled 'Assessing the Terrorist Threat' warns that the success of LeT's 60-hour assault on Mumbai in November 2008, which involved 10 Pakistani terrorists all willing to die, is producing similar copycat operations known as 'Fedayeen' (self-sacrificer) attacks.
"The long, drawn-out assault in Mumbai produced round-the -clock coverage around the globe, something other terrorist groups want to emulate. We have already seen examples in attacks on Afghan government buildings and in a similar attack in October 2009 against GHQ, the Pakistani military headquarters in Rawalpindi," it said.
The report also warns of possibility of assassinations of key leaders and US officials, and those who are perceived as insulting Islam.
"Because we rightly think of al-Qaeda and allied groups as preoccupied by inflicting mass-casualty attacks, we tend to ignore their long history of assassinating or attempting to assassinate key leaders and American officials," it said.