Yemeni security forces on Saturday arrested a woman believed to be involved in sending explosive packages bound for the United States, a security official said. The arrest was the first in the case, which has triggered an international security alert after two packages containing bombs - both sent from Yemen and addressed to synagogues in Chicago - were intercepted in Britain and Dubai.
"National security forces have just been able arrest the woman," the official said, adding that the woman had been traced through a telephone number she left with a cargo company. Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh said earlier that security forces had surrounded a house at an undisclosed location where a young woman believed to have sent the packages was taking refuge. He gave no other details about the woman.
"Yemen is determined to continue fighting terrorism and al Qaeda in co-operation with its partners. But we do not want anyone to interfere in Yemeni affairs by hunting down al Qaeda," Saleh said in a brief appearance to journalists, who were not given an opportunity to ask questions.
Saleh also said Yemen would be grateful for more co-operation with the US, British and Saudi governments on intelligence, saying there was a lack of co-ordination with their security agencies. Britain said it believed the device found on Friday aboard a cargo plane at its East Midlands airport was a viable bomb, big enough to bring down an aircraft and designed to go off on board.
"We believe the device was designed to go off on the aeroplane. We cannot be sure about the timing when that was meant to take place," Prime Minister David Cameron told reporters. The White House said Saudi Arabia had helped to identify the threat from Yemen, while Britain and the United Arab Emirates had also provided information.
Officials said the parcel bombs had the hallmarks of al Qaeda, and in particular its Yemen branch, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. At least one of them included PETN, the explosive used in a failed attempt to blow up a US jetliner on Christmas Day last year. In Washington, US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said authorities were checking whether other packages had been sent before the two that were intercepted.
"We're doing some reverse engineering, as it were, to identify other packages from Yemen," she said on NBC News. Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama thanked British Prime Minister David Cameron and Saudi King Abdullah Saturday for helping to disrupt a terror plot, but reiterated a call to Yemen for closer co-operation.
Obama phoned Cameron "to discuss the terrorist plot that was disrupted yesterday at East Midlands Airport and in Dubai as a result of the close co-operation between the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as other international partners," the White House said in a statement. He also placed a call to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, which has been praised by US officials including Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano for its tip-offs that helped thwart the plan.
Obama told Cameron that his top counter-terrorism advisor John Brennan was regularly speaking with his British counterpart "as we work together to prevent and disrupt future efforts to attack our citizens," the White House added. The attempt to send explosive-laden parcels from Yemen to the United States has been linked by US officials to the Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula. Brennan appeared to lean heavily on Yemen on Saturday, calling the country's president and reiterating a US call for "close" counterterrorism co-operation in the wake of the disrupted bomb plot.
"John Brennan spoke to President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen this morning and emphasised that the United States stands ready to assist the Yemeni government and the Yemeni people in their fight against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula," the White House said in a statement.
Brennan "underscored the importance of close counterterrorism co-operation, including the need to work together on the ongoing investigation into the events over the past few days," the White House said. The discovery of a suspicious package from Yemen on a cargo plane in central England, and another one in Dubai, sparked a global security alert Friday. Obama said they represented a "credible terrorist threat," and Napolitano said the plot bore the "hallmarks of al Qaeda." On Saturday, British Home Secretary Theresa May said the package found at East Midlands "was viable and could have exploded" and brought down a plane.