US scrambles to fix security failings in wake of Umar Abdulmutallab's attack

Dr Abu Bakr al-Qirbi, the Yemeni Foreign Minister, appealed yesterday for international help to suppress the threats posed by hundreds of Yemeni-based terrorists.

“Of course there are a number of al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen and some of their leaders. We realise this danger. They may actually plan attacks like the one we have just had in Detroit. There are maybe hundreds of them — 200, 300,” he said.

Mr Abdulmutallab claims to have been trained by al-Qaeda in Yemen – a claim that US officials call credible. The Yemeni Government confirmed yesterday that he spent a year in the country from 2004 to 2005, and another four-month stay until December this year.

The US is not short of military options in the region. Its Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain and the Pentagon maintains a substantial logistics base at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, less than 20 miles across the Red Sea from southwest Yemen. A major expansion of the airport there for the exclusive use of US and Nato coalition forces was completed this week, enabling the US Air Force to deploy tank-carrying C5 Galaxy aircraft to the Horn of Africa. A full-scale military offensive in Yemen remains unlikely as long as failures in US homeland security appear more pressing.

Mr Abdulmutallab’s name fell through cracks in the costly counter-terrorism apparatus set up since the September 11 attacks precisely to identify suspects.

Ian Kelly, a State Department spokesman, insisted that US Embassy officials in Nigeria and State Department staff in Washington had done all they could once alerted by Mr Abdulmutallab’s father to his son’s disappearance from Dubai and his extremist views. His name had been put on a watch list and forwarded to the National Counter-Terrorism Centre, Mr Kelly said. Asked whether his multi-entry visa to the US should have been revoked, he said: “It’s not for us to review that.”

Three congressional hearings are now scheduled for next month into what went wrong on and before Christmas Day — two in the Senate and one in the House of Representatives.