9/11-type attack planned on Israel, says army chief

Israel's army chief said yesterday the militant Al Qaida network had tried to recruit a Saudi Arabian pilot to carry out a suicide attack similar to the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Lieutenant General Moshe Ya'alon also said Israel was concerned that Saudi Arabia, which has no diplomatic relations with the Jewish state, had stationed F-16 fighter jets at a military base in Tabuk not far from Israel's southern border.

"The deployment of Saudi Arabian F-16s in Tabuk since Operation Iraqi Freedom is a new phenomenon," he told a conference on terrorism in Herzliya on the Mediterranean coast, referring to the US-led invasion of Iraq.

"We worry about it because we found out from Al Qaida detainees interrogated by others, not by Israeli intelligence, that Al Qaida sought to recruit a Saudi Arabian pilot to use either an F-16 or a civilian plane for a suicide air attack from Tabuk, like on the twins (towers) in New York on September 11."

Ya'alon gave no further details and did not explicitly say whether the alleged plan was for an attack against Israel.

He did not make clear whether there was any link with Tel Aviv office blocks known locally as the twin towers.

He said Israel had called for a change in the Saudi warplanes' deployment. Israeli media said earlier Israel had asked the United States to convey the request to the Saudis.

The United States blames Osama bin Laden's Al Qaida for the suicide attacks on Washington and New York which were carried out in hijacked airliners two years ago.

Ya'alon also called for efforts to prevent funds reaching militant groups such as Hamas that have carried out suicide bombings in the almost three-year-old uprising against Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

He said Saudi Arabia was the main source of such funding to Hamas.