WASHINGTON/LONDON (Reuters) - Security officials in Britain and Dubai intercepted two parcel bombs being sent from Yemen to the United States in a "credible terrorist threat," President Barack Obama said on Friday.
The parcels were bound for "two places of Jewish worship in Chicago," Obama said. The Anti-Defamation League, a prominent Jewish organization, earlier warned of a danger to U.S. Jewish institutions from packages mailed from Britain, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
Suspicion fell on al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which had taken responsibility for a failed plot to blow up a U.S. passenger jet on Christmas Day in 2009.
The group, thought to include Yemenis and Saudis, is affiliated with al Qaeda, whose militants killed about 3,000 people using hijacked planes in the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001.
"Initial examinations of those packages has determined that they do apparently contain explosive material," Obama said in a televised briefing, calling it "a credible terrorist threat against our country."
