WASHINGTON — One of the bombs hidden last month in two U.S.-bound packages from Yemen was timed to explode over the East Coast of the United States, British authorities said Wednesday.
Al-Qaeda’s Yemen-based wing has claimed responsibility for sending two parcel bombs concealed in printer cartridges that were intercepted last month in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and East Midlands, England.
Both package bombs were addressed to Jewish groups in Chicago, though officials have said they think the devices were intended to detonate in flight.
The bombing attempt, which was thwarted after a tip from Saudi intelligence, has led the Obama administration to consider stepping up its covert campaign against the al-Qaeda faction based on the Arabian Peninsula, including the potential for strikes from aerial drones.
One of the two bombs was taken off a cargo plane at East Midlands Airport north of London on Oct. 29.
“Forensic examination has indicated that if the device had activated it would have been at 10:30 hrs BST (9:30 a.m. British time) on Friday, 29 October 2010,” Scotland Yard said in a statement. That would have been 5:30 a.m. in New York.
“If the device had not been removed from the aircraft, the activation could have occurred over the eastern seaboard of the U.S.,” Scotland Yard’s statement said.
The bomb was defused by explosives officers less than three hours before it was set to explode, British police said.
French Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said last week that one of the two parcel bombs was defused just 17 minutes before it was due to explode, but Scotland Yard said it could not confirm that.
“We greatly appreciate the highly professional nature of the U.K. investigation and the spirit of partnership with which U.K. authorities have pursued this matter,” White House spokesman Nicholas Shapiro said in a statement.
Also Wednesday, U.S. authorities announced that al-Qaeda was not behind the Sept. 3 crash of a UPS cargo plane in Dubai as the group had claimed.
“The available information continues to indicate that the crash was an accident,” said a U.S. official familiar with the matter but not authorized to speak publicly about it.
In a statement last week, al-Qaeda’s Yemeni offshoot said that it “downed the UPS airplane but because the enemy’s media did not attribute the act to us, we kept silent about the operation until we could return the ball once more.”
Authorities said the crash of the UPS plane shortly after takeoff was caused by an onboard fire. Investigators reviewed the incident again after the parcel-bomb plot but found nothing to change their initial conclusion.
