Middle East

Al Qaeda targeting oil chokepoints

Cairo: Al Qaeda has called for attacks on chokepoints of oil shipments to the West in an English language propaganda magazine posted online. The terrorist group has highlighted the Straits of Gibraltar, the Straits of Hormuz, the Suez Canal, and the Bab El Mendeb Strait as possible targets to disrupt global energy flows.

“Even if a single supertanker… were to be attacked in one of the chokepoints or hijacked and scuttled in one of these narrow sea lanes, the consequences would be phenomenal…” an article within the magazine noted. The group is pushing a “coordinated effort to disrupt enemy shipping in the future in all of these regions” to cut the “energy umbilical cord” of the western economy—oil.

As well as targeting ships, the article called for terminals and pipelines to be attacked.

Al Qaeda was behind the attacks on the French tanker Limberg off Yemen in 2002, while a splinter group in Sinai fired an RPG on a giant Cosco containership transiting the Suez Canal last year.  [22/10/14]

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