Intelligence official: Syrian al-Qaida wants to attack US

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

The Syrian militant group tied to al-Qaida, the al-Nusra Front, wants to attack the United States and is training a growing cadre of fighters from Europe, the Middle East and even the U.S., the top U.S. intelligence official told Congress on Wednesday.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate Intelligence Committee that such al-Qaida groups in Syria have started training camps “to train people to go back to their countries” — one of the newest threats emerging in the past year to U.S. security. He said “al-Nusra Front, to name one .... does have aspirations for attacks on the homeland.” Clapper didn’t elaborate or offer any evidence of al-Nusra’s desire to attack the U.S.

Clapper described the Syrian militants as one of the newest groups to join a diverse and widely dispersed network of al-Qaida-affiliated and other extremists bent on carrying out attacks in the U.S. He said more established groups such as Yemen’s al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula still are more capable of carrying out attacks against the U.S., but described steep growth in numbers of fighters in Syria.

Clapper said out of an estimated 75,000 to 110,000 rebels overall battling the government of Bashar Assad in Syria, some 26,000 are extremists, and about 7,000 of them foreigners from some 50 countries, including Europe.

“Not only are fighters being drawn to Syria, but so are technologies and techniques that pose particular problems to our defenses,” said committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein. She warned Syria could become “a launching point or way station for terrorists seeking to attack the United States or other nations.”