US News
US disrupts alleged terror plot to blow up New York tunnels (Updated)
By DPA
Jul 7, 2006, 19:00 GMT

New York/Beirut - On the first anniversary of the London underground bombings, US officials Friday confirmed that they had disrupted a major terrorist attack on New York\'s tunnels that was to have taken place in October or November.

One of the main suspects, Issam Hammoud, a Lebanese national with the code name Amir al-Andoulsi, was arrested last month in the bomb plot, Lebanese security sources said Friday.

Hammoud was part of a group suspected of links to al-Qaeda, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Seniora confirmed. The suspect was arrested by the intelligence department of the Lebanese Internal Security Forces.

Mark Mershon, of the joint federal-local terrorism task force in New York City, said at a hastily called news conference that the international cooperation and coordination that went into disrupting the plot was \'beyond textbook, in fact, it\'s storybook.\'

He chided the media leaks that reported the disrupted plot earlier Friday, indicating it had caused problems in the international relationships among intelligence agencies that US officials were working to \'shore up.\'

US officials said that all told, there had been eight principal players identified in the plot to bomb the Holland Tunnel in lower Manhattan that connects the city to New Jersey and other targets, but only some were in custody, including Hammoud in Lebanon.

Mershon said that Hammoud, age 31, had confessed to the plot, proclaimed his adherence \'to the philosophy of al-qaeda\' and sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden, the elusive al-Qaeda terrorist leader.

Officials said the plot proves that New York is still in the \'crosshairs\' of the teorrists.