Israel says to stay on alert for terrorist attacks

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -- Israeli officials said Tuesday that security forces would remain on alert after their success at cracking a network of militants linked to Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden.

Israel said Monday that over the past few weeks it had arrested 23 suspected guerrillas allegedly planning bombing attacks on Israelis. Prime Minister Ehud Barak's security adviser Danny Yatom said he had no information about where the bin Laden cell was planning to strike.

"We know of no specific place that had been targeted but terrorist organizations will continue to try to attack us and we have to be prepared," Yatom told Israel Radio.

The militant Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad have in the past tried to sabotage Israeli-Palestinian peace deals by launching large-scale bombing attacks against Israeli targets which have killed scores of people.

Palestinian officials denied Israel's assertions they were involved in the crackdown against the militants and that a Palestinian man called Nabil Aukal, who Israel arrested in June, was the cell's ringleader.

Palestinian security chief in Gaza, Mohammad Dahlan told Reuters, "the whole story about bin Laden is a big lie."

Aukal's family in Gaza said he had no connection to Islamic militants. They said he had been in Pakistan recently but only for religious reasons.

A United States congressional report issued in Washington Monday warned that bin Laden supporters were planning attacks in Israel to thwart Middle East peacemaking. It said some Hamas members may be gravitating to bin Laden, who lives in exile in Afghanistan.

The United States wants bin Laden to stand trial on charges of masterminding the bombing of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998 which killed 220 people.

Security analyst Yoram Schweitzer from the International Policy Institute for Counter-intelligence said many of bin Laden's Palestinian recruits had been taught to use explosives in training camps in Afghanistan.

"They were planning several things. They were planning mass casualties attacks, part of it was to fire a missile at a settlement, kidnap soldiers and set off large explosive charges with a remote control in a very highly populated area," he said.

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Israel's Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh, who last week warned that Iran was encouraging Palestinian militants to attack Israel, said the bin Laden cell had a dangerous combination of "enormous financial and organizational abilities and religious fervor that is very extreme."

Schweitzer said bin Laden would continue his attempts to recruit Palestinian operatives from the West Bank and Israeli Arabs for training in Afghanistan.

Three of the militants arrested were Israeli Arabs, Israeli officials said.

Jordan and Lebanon have both uncovered militant cells linked to bin Laden and tried dozens of members accused of planning attacks against U.S. and Israeli targets in Jordan.

Schweitzer said bin Laden's group was also targeting Israelis and Jews in other parts of the world.

"To kill a French Jew is like killing an Israeli. There is no difference (for him), so when he attacks a Jewish target it's like attacking Israel," he said.

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