Washington, Sept 4(ANI): The numerous references to the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, in the documents seized from Osama bin Laden's lair in Abbottabad, have prompted heightened security measures across the United States in the build up to the sensitive date.
Law enforcement officials said that they have no intelligence about a credible terrorist plot around the anniversary, but a number of federal and local officials said they are acutely aware that before Osama bin Laden was killed, he seemed fixated on attacking the United States again on September 11, The Washington Post reports.
There were numerous references to the 10-year anniversary of the attacks on New York and Washington in the trove of digital and handwritten materials found at bin Laden's lair in Pakistan's Abbottabad town in May, the report said.
The material also contained various inchoate ideas about how al-Qaeda might construct a terrorist operation, according to law enforcement and intelligence officials, the report added.
"We would be paying extra attention because of the Sept. 11 anniversary alone without what was found at the bin Laden compound, but the fact that in the aftermath of his death there were documents indicating an attack on or about the anniversary - that has certainly focused our planning," said Paul J. Browne, chief spokesman for the New York City Police Department.
According to the report, one official who reviewed the materials said that the date became more significant to al-Qaeda mainly because bin Laden and others tracked US media and noted the public's preoccupation with the September 11 date.
"Our obsession with anniversaries had an impact on him. He learned over time we are particularly sensitive about particular dates," said a senior US counterterrorism official who reviewed the bin Laden materials.
Det. Crystal Nosal, a spokeswoman for the Arlington County Police Department, said that officials "are taking security measures that are heightened beyond a normal day,'' adding that the measures will be across the county and extend to a run that will pass the Pentagon on September 10.
In New York, police will create what they call a frozen zone around Ground Zero, which will extend for several blocks in all directions, and only people with credentials will be able to get into the traffic-free zone, and residents wanting to return to their apartments will have to be escorted by police officers, the report said.
Police snipers will be on the rooftops near the World Trade Center site, Browne said, adding that the overall effort is an attempt to "intercept an attack if one is coming our way and to respond to any number of threats, including the active shooters you saw in Mumbai, anything coming in over the water, chemical, biological, radiological.''
On November 26, 2008, a group of gunmen with Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani militant group, launched coordinated attacks on hotels, a railroad station and a Jewish center in Mumbai, India's commercial capital.
Several people were held hostage over the next three days, and at least 166 people were killed before Indian commandos smoked out the last of the terrorists on November 28, 2008. (ANI)
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