One of two powerful bombs mailed from Yemen to Chicago-area synagogues travelled on two passenger planes within West Asia, a Qatar Airways spokesman said Sunday. The US said the plot bears the hallmarks of Al Qaeda’s offshoot in Yemen and vowed to destroy the group.
The airline spokesman said a package containing explosives hidden in a printer cartridge arrived in Qatar Airways’ hub in Doha, Qatar, on one of the carrier’s flights from the Yemeni capital. It was then shipped on a separate Qatar Airways plane to Dubai in the UAE, where it was discovered by the authorities late Thursday or early Friday. A second, similar package turned up in England on Friday.
The airline spokesman did not give any timeframe for the two flights in question — the airline operates daily passenger flights from Yemen that could also carry courier packages.
The plot was the latest to expose persistent security gaps in international air travel and cargo shipping nearly a decade after the September 11, 2001 attacks.