Terror bombs were primed to bring down cargo planes mid-air

London, Oct. 31 (ANI): British security and intelligence officials have claimed that the explosive packages found on US-bound aircraft in the UK and Dubai were meant to bring them down mid-air.

Intelligence experts believe the use of the devices, contained in printer cartridges on board two Chicago-bound cargo planes, represents a shift in terrorist tactics to commercial targets, the Guardian reports.

US President Barack Obama phoned British Prime Minister David Cameron to thank him personally for the UK's "close co-operation" in helping disrupt the bomb plot.

Cameron said: "We have to do even more to crack down and cut out the cancer of al-Qaida in Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula. We have immediately banned packages coming to or through Britain from the Yemen."

"In the end these terrorists think our interconnectedness, our openness as modern countries, is what makes us weak. They are wrong - it is a source of our strength, and we will use that strength, that determination, that power and that solidarity to defeat them," he added. (ANI)