Intelligence shows al Qaeda has plans to target merchant shipping in a bid to disrupt world trade, Britain's top navy officer said in an interview published on Thursday.
"We have got an underlying level of intelligence which shows there is a threat," the Royal Navy's First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral Sir Alan West, was quoted as saying by Lloyd's List maritime newspaper.
The Defence Ministry confirmed West had given the interview in which he reiterated previous warnings about the threat of an attack on the world's commercial fleets.
"What we've noticed is that al Qaeda and other organisations have an awareness about maritime trade ... They've realised how important it is for world trade in general," he said.
Since the September 11 attacks on the United States, governments and security experts have repeatedly voiced fears about the vulnerability of the shipping industry, which carries more than 90 percent of the world's traded goods.
The British naval chief said Western governments had intelligence that showed extreme groups viewed ships as iconic targets and had plans to blow them up. "We've seen other plans from intelligence of attacks on merchant shipping," he said.
"I can't give you detail on any of that, clearly, but we are aware that they have plans and (that) they've looked at this," West was quoted as telling the paper.
The Defence Ministry said the comments related to existing naval intelligence and were not based on new attack-specific reports. "He did not say that there was any new intelligence to suggest an imminent attack," a spokesman said.
The spokesman said the admiral had chosen to talk about the maritime threat because he was visiting a region of the world - Gibraltar - that was heavily reliant on shipping.