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Yemeni authorities on Saturday arrested a woman thought to be involved in sending explosive packages headed to the United States and were searching for more suspects believed linked to al-Qaida, Yemeni security officials said.
The arrest came after authorities surrounded a house where she was hiding in the capital San'a, Reuters reported.
The suspect is a medical student who was traced from a phone number on the shipping invoice, NBC News reported. Her father works as an oil engineer.
Yemeni officials told The Associated Press authorities were searching for a number of suspects believed to have used forged documents and ID cards that played a role in the plot that was thwarted Friday.
Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh earlier told reporters that the United States and the United Arab Emirates provided him with information that identified the woman as a suspect. "Yemen is determined to continue fighting terrorism and al-Qaida in cooperation with its partners. But we do not want anyone to interfere in Yemeni affairs by hunting down al-Qaida," Saleh said at a news conference. He gave no details about the woman and did not take questions from journalists.
Yemeni authorities were checking more packages in a search for the terrorists who tried to mail bombs to Chicago-area synagogues in a brazen plot that officials said bore the hallmarks of al-Qaida.
The package bombs have prompted investigators in the U.S. and the United Arab Emirates to re-examine the crash of a UPS cargo plane in Dubai on Sept. 3, NBC News reported.
Some reports at the time said a fire had broken out in the plane just after it took off from Dubai International Airport. The crash killed two crew members.
"People are obviously taking another hard look at why that plane went down, but no hard conclusions have been reached yet," a U.S. official told NBC News.
Authorities on three continents thwarted the mail-bomb attacks when they seized explosives on cargo planes in Dubai and England on Friday. The plot sent tremors throughout the U.S., where after a frenzied day searching planes and parcel trucks for other explosives, officials temporarily banned all new cargo from Yemen.
Several U.S. officials said they were increasingly confident that al-Qaida's Yemen branch, the group behind the failed Detroit airliner bombing last Christmas, was responsible.
President Barack Obama said the coordinated attacks were a "credible terrorist threat."
A Yemeni security official said investigators there were examining 24 other packages in the capital, San'a. A second Yemeni official described the search as precautionary and said there were no indications the packages contained explosives. He said authorities also hoped the searches would help gather evidence in their hunt for the bombers.
Authorities were questioning cargo workers at the airport as well as employees of the local shipping companies contracted to work with FedEx and UPS, the official said.
In Dubai, where one of the two bombs was found in a FedEx shipment from Yemen, police said it contained a powerful explosive and bore the hallmarks of al-Qaida.
The white powder explosives were discovered in the ink cartridge of a computer printer, said a police statement carried by the official state news agency WAM. The device was rigged to an electric circuit, and a mobile phone chip was hidden inside the printer, the statement said.
"The parcel was prepared in a professional way where a closed electrical circuit was connected to a mobile phone SIM card hidden inside the printer," the statement said.
"This tactic carries the hallmarks of methods used previously by terrorist organizations such as al-Qaida," it added.
The bomb also contained lead azide, which is used in detonators. Dubai police experts defused the device, the statement said.
"This tactic carries the hallmarks of methods used previously by terrorist organizations such as al-Qaida," it added.
The bomb also contained lead azide, which is used in detonators. Dubai police experts defused the device, the statement said.
Yemen promised to investigate the plot. The U.S. has FBI, military and intelligence officers stationed in the country to conduct an inquiry. There are only a handful of international shipping locations in the impoverished Arab nation, but U.S. officials worried that record keeping would be sparse and investigators would have to rely more on intelligence sources to identify the would-be bombers.
The other package was found at an airport in central England. Preliminary tests indicated both packages contained PETN, a powerful industrial explosive and the same chemical as in the attempted Christmas attack, U.S. officials said.
The bomb was powerful enough to bring down an aircraft, British authorities said Saturday.
"I can confirm the device was viable and could have exploded. The target may have been an aircraft and had it detonated the aircraft could have been brought down," British Home Secretary Theresa May said.
In San'a, there was no visible security presence Saturday at the UPS and FedEx offices, which are located on the same street.
An employee at the UPS office said they had been instructed not to receive any packages for delivery for the time being. He refused to be identified by name because he said he had been instructed by authorities not to talk to reporters.
No explosives were found on an Emirates Airlines passenger jet that was escorted down the coast to New York by American fighter jets.
Obama on Saturday called British Prime Minister David Cameron and Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah to discuss the thwarted attacks, thanking Abdullah for the key Saudi tip that helped expose the bomb plot. Obama also received a briefing from his national security adviser, John Brennan, before campaigning in three states ahead of Tuesday's elections.
Yemeni authorities are checking more packages in the search for terrorists who tried to mail bombs to Chicago-area synagogues. The plot has raised fears of a new al-Qaida terror attack.
"The forensic analysis is under way," Brennan said. "Clearly from the initial observation, the initial analysis that was done, the materials that were found in the device that was uncovered was intended to do harm."
While Obama didn't specifically accuse Yemen's al-Qaida branch, Al-Qaida in the Arab Peninsula, Brennan called it the most active al-Qaida franchise and said anyone associated with the group was a subject of concern.
"They came out of Yemen. They certainly have the hallmarks of AQAP, but that is part of the investigation," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Saturday on MSNBC.
That would include the radical U.S.-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who now is in hiding in Yemen. He has been linked in the Christmas attack and has inspired other terrorists with his violent message. Also hiding in Yemen is Samir Khan, an American who declared himself a traitor and helps produce al-Qaida propaganda.
The terrorist efforts "underscore the necessity of remaining vigilant against terrorism," the president said.
The Homeland Security Department said it was stepping up airline security, but White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Americans did not need to change their travel plans.
After a day of searches in Philadelphia, Newark, N.J., and New York City, no explosives were found inside the United States, though the investigation was continuing on at least one suspicious package late Friday night.
Intelligence officials were onto the suspected plot for days, officials said. The packages in England and Dubai were discovered after Saudi Arabian intelligence picked up information related to Yemen and passed it on to the U.S., two officials said.Most of the officials spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the ongoing investigation.
U.S. intelligence officials warned last month that terrorists hoped to mail chemical and biological materials as part of an attack on the United States and other Western countries. The alert came in a Sept. 23 bulletin from the Homeland Security Department obtained by The Associated Press.
Since the failed Christmas bombing, Yemen has been a focus for U.S. counterterrorism officials. Before that attack, the U.S. regarded al-Qaida's branch there as primarily a threat in the region, not to the United States.
The Yemen branch, known as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, has since become a leading source of terrorist propaganda and recruiting. Authorities believe about 300 al-Qaida members operate in Yemen.
The Yemeni government has stepped up counterterrorism operations, with help from the U.S. military and intelligence officials.
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