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Britain declares East Africa a terror zone

By Hasan Suroor

LONDON MAY 17. Britain has declared much of East Africa as a danger zone after a review of threat perception from terrorist groups, adding six more countries to the list of places in the region which Britons should avoid.

The Foreign Office said there was a "clear terrorist threat'' in Somalia, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti and warned Britons, visiting any of these countries, to be on their guard. The warning came hours after the Government banned all British Airways flights to and from Kenya saying that there was a specific threat of a terrorist attack on a British target.

Security fears were heightened after the bomb blasts in Morocco, and last week's bombing in Riyadh, regarded by defence experts as a signal to `sleeper' Al-Qaeda cells to attack Western targets in a `backlash' against the invasion of Iraq. "The bomb attack in Riyadh on May 12 shows that the terrorist threat remains real,'' a Foreign Office statement said. East Africa is regarded here as a hotbed of suspected terrorist activity ever since the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the bombing of a hotel in the Kenyan tourist resort of Mombassa last November.

British and U.S. investigators were reported to be assisting the Kenyans in tracking down Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, an alleged Al-Qaeda agent suspected to be behind the Mombassa attacks.

Intelligence sources believe he has returned to Kenya and could be plotting an attack on a western target in the region.

With nearly 75 countries around the world, including Jammu and Kashmir in India, now on the West's list of potentially dangerous places, British tourists said there were few areas left for them to go for a holiday. Critics called the growing number of terror `alerts' an over-reaction and The Times, in a survey of global warnings said "in part these criticisms of over-reaction are justified''.

The warnings of future attacks, it said, were `vague' and stemmed from fears following the Riyadh attacks.

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