LONDON, December 23 -- Al Qaeda has been revitalised and is planning to commit new and spectacular attacks on the West, according to a senior British minister. The group, which committed the 9/11 hijackings in 2001 that killed almost 3,000 people in New York City, is now trying to plot attacks on airports and develop technology that can bring down airliners. British Security Minister Ben Wallace, in an interview with The Sunday Times, said Al Qaeda posed such a threat that it was keeping top ministers “awake at night”. Such technology may include drones with explosives attached or miniaturised bombs capable of being smuggled on to airliners. The group’s most powerful wing is in Yemen and is known as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, but it also has a presence in Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan and the Maghreb. His comments come only days after US President Donald Trump decided to withdraw US troops from Syria. Experts and diplomats have given warnings that the withdrawal may embolden militant groups such as Al Qaeda, which has used the chaos of the civil war to plot attacks on the West. The militant group, which has had a reduced profile in recent years after the growth of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, has long targeted aviation for spectacular attacks. In 2006, British police discovered a transatlantic Al Qaeda plot to bring down airliners using liquid explosives disguised as soft drinks. The result was increased security measures on flights regarding the carrying of liquids. Three years later, Al Qaeda’s top bomb maker Anwar Al Awlaki discussed a plot with a young Nigerian volunteer in Yemen, sending him on a mission to bring down an airliner with explosives in his underwear. His explosives failed to detonate when his underwear caught fire as the plane approached Detroit on Christmas Day. Awlaki would later become the first American citizen deliberately killed on the orders of a US President without charge because of the threat he posed to national security.
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