Al-Qaeda actively planning to make 'dirty bomb'

London, Feb 2 (ANI): After getting close to producing workable and efficient "biological and chemical weapons", Al-Qaeda is actively trying to get nuclear material and recruiting rogue scientists from Pakistan to build a "dirty" bomb, according to leaked diplomatic documents.

Senior British defence officials have also raised deep concerns that a rogue scientist in the Pakistani nuclear programme "could gradually smuggle enough material out to make a weapon," according to a document detailing official talks in London in February 2009.

Thousands of classified American cables obtained by the WikiLeaks quote security briefings as suggesting that jihadi groups are also close to producing "workable and efficient" biological and chemical weapons that could kill thousands.

At a Nato meeting in January 2009, security chiefs briefed member states that al-Qaeda was plotting a programme of "dirty radioactive IEDs", makeshift nuclear roadside bombs that could be used against British troops in Afghanistan, The Telegraph reports.

The briefings also state that al-Qaeda documents found in Afghanistan in 2007 revealed that greater advances had been made in bio-terrorism than was previously realised.

Alerts about the smuggling of nuclear material, sent to Washington from foreign US embassies, document how criminal and terrorist gangs were trafficking large amounts of highly radioactive material across Europe, Africa and the Middle East, The Telegraph reports.

Tomihiro Taniguchi, the deputy director-general of the IAEA, has privately warned America that the world faces the threat of a "nuclear 9/11" if stores of uranium and plutonium were not secured against terrorists. (ANI)