KUWAIT CITY, Oct 30, (Agencies):  Kuwait declared a state of alert at the airport, all sea ports and land border crossings Friday evening after the United States issued a warning that the region might witness a major terrorist attack, while the British authorities on Saturday said a bomb found on a US-bound cargo plane was powerful enough to bring down an aircraft as forces in Yemen searched for suspected al-Qaeda militants behind a plot involving Jewish targets in Chicago.

Exceptionally strict measures were taken at the Kuwait International Airport, said security sources, adding “all baggage and cargo were inspected twice and passengers on all flights had to go through stringent security inspections.”

Also, all airports in the region are coordinating with each other and are preparing to receive any aircraft that may have to make an emergency landing.  They have also decided to share information about any suspicious package received at any of the airports in the region, sources added.
Arrested

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 cooperation 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 cooperation with the US, British and Saudi governments on intelligence, saying there was a lack of coordination 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.

President Barack Obama, addressing the nation on Friday, said US authorities would spare no effort to find the source of the packages, which he called a “credible terrorist threat”.
One of the packages was found on a United Parcel Service cargo plane at East Midlands Airport, north of London. The other was discovered hidden in a computer printer cartridge at a FedEx Corp facility in Dubai.
Dubai’s civil aviation authority said the package found in Dubai had been brought in on a Qatar Airways plane that had stopped over in the Qatari capital Doha.
UPS and FedEx, the world’s largest cargo airline, halted shipments from Yemen and on Saturday Yemen shut down both companies’ operations there, citing security concerns.
Britain halted all air freight from Yemen. Obama thanked British and Saudi leaders Saturday for helping foil a bid to send explosive-laden packages to the United States, but pressed Yemen for more cooperation in battling the militants behind the plot.
Obama telephoned both British Prime Minister David Cameron and Saudi King Abdullah Saturday morning, a day after authorities in Britain and the Middle East found explosive parcels shipped via cargo planes from Yemen and addressed to synagogues in Chicago.
“The president expressed his strong appreciation for the critical role played by Saudi counterterrorism officials in averting this attempted attack,” the White House said about Obama’s call to King Abdullah.
The kingdom earlier had been praised by US officials including Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano for providing tip-offs that helped thwart the plan.
Obama also phoned Cameron “to discuss the terrorist plot that was disrupted,” the White House added.
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 plot was linked by US officials Saturday to the Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula.
Brennan appeared to lean heavily on Yemen on Saturday, calling the country’s president for the second time in two days and reiterating a US call for “close” counterterrorism cooperation in the wake of the disrupted bomb plot.
In the call to President Ali Abdullah Saleh, Obama’s advisor “underscored the importance of close counterterrorism cooperation, including the need to work together on the ongoing investigation into the events over the past few days,” the White House said.
He also “emphasized 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,” it said in a statement.
Obama said the bombs represented a “credible terrorist threat,” and Napolitano said the plot bore the “hallmarks of al-Qaeda.”
Danger
The discovery of US-bound mail bombs reveals the danger posed by air shipping, which is governed by a patchwork of inconsistent controls that make packages a potential threat even to passenger jets, experts said Saturday.
Most countries require parcels placed on passenger flights by international shipping companies to go through at least one security check. Methods include hand checks, sniffer dogs, X-ray machines and high-tech devices that can find traces of explosives on paper or cloth swabs.
But security protocols vary widely around the world. Experts cautioned that cargo, even when loaded onto passenger planes, is sometimes lightly inspected or completely unexamined, particularly when it comes from countries without well-developed aviation security systems.
The fact that at least two parcels containing explosives could be placed on cargo-only flights to England and Dubai, one in a FedEx shipment from Yemen, was a dramatic example of the risks, but the dangers have been obvious for years, analysts said.
One particular vulnerability in the system: trusted companies that regularly do business with freight shippers are allowed to ship parcels as “secure” cargo that is not automatically subjected to further checks.
Even where rules are tight on paper, enforcement can be lax. A US government team that visited cargo sites around the world last year found a wide range of glaring defects, said John Shingleton, managing director of Handy Shipping Guide, an industry information service.
“They walked into a warehouse where supposedly secure cargo was,” he said, declining to say where the site was. “Generally security is high, but if you think it’s perfect you’re kidding yourself.”
Cargo companies have long shipped on passenger airlines, for whom cargo provides extra income.

PETN
PETN, the substance Dubai police said they found in a US-bound air parcel, is a potent explosive that can be set off either with a detonator or extreme heat.
The same explosive material was reportedly found in a second package that was intercepted at Britain’s East Midlands airport.
Traces of pentaerythritol tetranitrate, or PETN, were discovered hidden in an ink toner of a computer printer along with a mobile phone detonator in the package found in Dubai, police there said.
While the chemical is also used to treat heart conditions, PETN is best known as a military grade explosive.
It was part of the device set off in a failed bid on Christmas Day last year to bomb a US airliner flying to Detroit by Nigerian Farouk Abdulmutallab, who hid the contraption in his underwear.
PETN was also the explosive used in an unsuccessful 2001 attempt by Briton Richard Reid to set off a bomb hidden in his shoe while flying from Paris to Miami.
It is a major ingredient of the plastic explosive Semtex and TNT and is used in a wide range of military weapons.
Detonators for Semtex, a widely used explosive of 1960s Czechoslovakian origin, consist of a smaller PETN explosion set off by an electric current.
Just a few hundred grams of Semtex were enough to bring down the PanAm Boeing 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 270 people. The material was also used in the majority of bomb attacks by the IRA militant group in Britain.