International Shia News Agency

FBI head:US preparing for imminent terrorist attack by Khorasan Group

James Comey made the remarks in an interview broadcast on Sunday night, following reports which said that US airstrikes targeting the Khorasan Group in Syria were unsuccessful, according to American officials familiar with the operation.

SHAFAQNA – The head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) says the United States is preparing for an imminent terrorist attack by Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, the Khorasan Group.

Many of the suspected leaders and members of the group managed to escape the September 22 air raids, said three US officials.

The FBI director said the group was working on a plan to carry out terrorist attacks against the United States.

“Khorasan was working and may still be working on an effort to attack the United States or our allies, and looking to do it very, very soon,” he told the CBS television network.

He said he cannot tell whether “their plan is tomorrow or three weeks or three months from now.”

“Given our visibility, we know they’re serious people, bent on destruction. And so we have to act as if it’s coming tomorrow,” Comey added.

On September 23, Army Lt. Gen. William C. Mayville Jr., the Pentagon’s director for operations, said the terrorist group was nearing “the execution phase of an attack either in Europe or the homeland.”

Mayville said the Khorasan Group has been trying to recruit people in the US as operatives, noting that the group was not targeting the government of Bashar al-Assad or the Syrian people, but rather forming roots there to plan attacks against the US and other Western countries.

Syria has been gripped by deadly violence since March 2011. The US and its regional allies — especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey – have been supporting the militants operating inside Syria since the beginning of the crisis.

More than 191,000 people have been killed in over three years of fighting in the war-ravaged country, says the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), calling the figure a probable “underestimate of the real total number of people killed.

The US and several of its Arab allies — Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, — have been conducting airstrikes against ISIL militants inside Syria since last month without any authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate.

 

Source: Press TV

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