Plague kills 40 at al-Qaeda camp

[Dr Mordrid]

The righteous hand of Allah perhaps?

Or maybe they were making a bioweapon and it got out of its cage.

Telegraph link.....

Black Death kills al-Qaeda operatives in Algeria

The Black Death has reportedly killed at least 40 al-Qaeda operatives in North Africa.

Last Updated: 3:33PM GMT 19 Jan 2009

The disease, which struck Europe in the Middle Ages killing more than 25 million people, has swept through a training camp for insurgents in Algeria.

The arrival of the plague was discovered when security forces found the body of a dead terrorist by a roadside, the Sun reports.

The victim belonged to the large al-Qaeda network AQLIM (al-Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb).

A security source told the paper: "This is the deadliest weapon yet in the war against terror. Most of the terrorists do not have the basic medical supplies needed to treat the disease.

"It spreads It spreads quickly and kills within hours. This will be really worrying al-Qaeda."

Black Death comes in various forms and was one of the deadliest pandemics in human history when it struck in the 1340s killing 75 million people across North Africa, Asia and Europe.

Bubonic Plague is spread by bites from infected rat fleas. Symptoms include painful boils in the groin, neck and armpits. In Pneumonic Plague, airborn bacteria spread like flu. Without medication it can be deadly.

The new epidemic began in the cave hideouts of AQLIM in Tizi Ouzou province, 150km east of the capital Algiers, the Sun reports.

The group, led by wanted terror figure Abdelmalek Droudkal, was forced to turn its shelters in the Yakouren forest into mass graves and flee.

The group now fears the highly-infectious disease could have spread to other al-Qaeda training camps or Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, the paper said.

A source said: "The emirs (leaders) fear surviving terrorists will surrender to escape a horrible death."

AQLIM bombed the UN headquarters in Algiers in 2007, killing 41.

[J1NG]

Heh, you know? On the main thread lister, this title looks more like "Plaque" kills 40... rather than "plague.

J1NG

[Elie]

well they got what they deserve

[cjolley]

Heh, you know? On the main thread lister, this title looks more like "Plaque" kills 40... rather than "plague.

J1NG

Possibly.
Have you ever seen their teeth?



PS couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of guys.

[Helevitia]

Possibly.
Have you ever seen their teeth?



PS couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of guys.

HAHA!

[ND66]

...Or maybe they were making a bioweapon and it got out of its cage....

Possibly…


.

[Dr Mordrid]

Yersinia pestis, the plague bacteria, has an incubation period of only 2-6 days, so if any of these guys have been traveling between camps things could get ugly.

[Dr Mordrid]

It WAS an attempt to weaponize something!!

Self-exterminating terrorists, a great innovation in arms design

Washinton Times link.....

Al Qaeda bungles arms experiment

Biological or chemical weapons

An al Qaeda affiliate in Algeria closed a base earlier this month after an experiment with unconventional weapons went awry, a senior U.S. intelligence official said Monday.

The official, who spoke on the condition he not be named because of the sensitive nature of the issue, said he could not confirm press reports that the accident killed at least 40 al Qaeda operatives, but he said the mishap led the militant group to shut down a base in the mountains of Tizi Ouzou province in eastern Algeria.

He said authorities in the first week of January intercepted an urgent communication between the leadership of al Qaeda in the Land of the Maghreb (AQIM) and al Qaeda's leadership in the tribal region of Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan. The communication suggested that an area sealed to prevent leakage of a biological or chemical substance had been breached, according to the official.

"We don't know if this is biological or chemical," the official said.

The story was first reported by the British tabloid the Sun, which said the al Qaeda operatives died after being infected with a strain of bubonic plague, the disease that killed a third of Europe's population in the 14th century. But the intelligence official dismissed that claim.

AQIM, according to U.S. intelligence estimates, maintains about a dozen bases in Algeria, where the group has waged a terrorist campaign against government forces and civilians. In 2006, the group claimed responsibility for an attack on foreign contractors. In 2007, the group said it bombed U.N. headquarters in Algiers, an attack that killed 41 people.

Al Qaeda is believed by U.S. and Western experts to have been pursuing biological weapons since at least the late 1990s. A 2005 report on unconventional weapons drafted by a commission led by former Sen. Charles Robb, Virginia Democrat, and federal appeals court Judge Laurence Silberman concluded that al Qaeda's biological weapons program "was extensive, well organized and operated two years before the Sept. 11" terror attacks in the U.S.

Another report from the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation, released in December, warned that "terrorists are more likely to be able to obtain and use a biological weapon than a nuclear weapon."

British authorities in January 2003 arrested seven men they accused of producing a poison from castor beans known as ricin. British officials said one of the suspects had visited an al Qaeda training camp. In the investigation into the case, British authorities found an undated al Qaeda manual on assassinations with a recipe for making the poison.

The late leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab Zarqawi, was suspected of developing ricin in northern Iraq. Then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell referred to the poison in his presentation to the U.N. Security Council in February 2003 that sought to lay the groundwork for the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Roger Cressey, a former senior counterterrorism official at the National Security Council under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, told The Washington Times that al Qaeda has had an interest in acquiring a poisons capability since the late 1990s.

"This is something that al Qaeda still aspires to do, and the infrastructure to develop it does not have to be that sophisticated," he said.

Mr. Cressey added that he also is concerned about al Qaeda in the Land of the Maghreb, which refers to the North African countries of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.

"Al Qaeda in the Maghreb is probably the most operationally capable affiliate in the organization right now," he said.

[ND66]

Do we have any Napalm left in stock?


.

[Dr Mordrid]

While napalm-B is still around ("napalm" being the thickener used to gel the fuel, often gasoline) the incineration weapons of choice are now FAE's (FAE = fuel air explosive), AKA 'thermobaric weapons'

* BLU-73 FAE I
* BLU-95 500-lb (FAE-II)
* BLU-96 2,000-lb (FAE-II)
* CBU-55 FAE I (cluster bomb)
* CBU-72 FAE I (cluster bomb)

and of course air blasts by the big boys of the 'conventional' world;

* GBU-43/B 22,600-lb Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB)
* BLU-82 15,000-lb Daisy-Cutter

[ND66]

Making a big hole in the ground where that camp was would be good too...

.

[Jammrock]

You have to wonder whether the outbreak was caused by some special forces hitting a cannister from a klick out or just plain stupidity. It wouldn't surprise me either way.

[Dr Mordrid]

If it was SpOps guys I say bring 'em home & give them a ticker-tape parade, but I'm betting on stupidity.

Trying to set up what should have been a BSL-4 facility in the Algerian badlands is asking for trouble.

[Nowhere]

I really don't know if there's that much reason to cheer?

Now they know how potent it is/that it will work. Just a matter of getting samples (hey, it's not that those guys aren't suicidal...plus, I imagine, lower operatives are sufficienty brainwashed are disposable), perhaps they have it somewhere else already. Perhaps even that's a test, with unexpectedly good results?