Insights

Growing fears that al Qaeda or ISIS may attach bombs to ships

It has been reported that special forces, special boat service (SBS) and Royal Navy operatives are searching for mines and explosive devices which may have been attached to ships transiting from the Middle East to the UK. The searches are taking place predominantly at terminals on the Isle of Grain in Kent and at Milford Haven in Wales.

The increase in searches has come amid growing fears that al Qaeda or Islamic State-linked terrorists may seek to explore new tactics and target the shipping industry, detonating explosives once they reach the UK. As such, large tankers are now being searched whilst in foreign docks and on arrival to some UK docks, in counter terror measures and in attempts to prevent a possible explosion, loss of life and/or environmental damage.

One spokesman commented, “The threat against gas tankers emerged a couple years ago and we have been training to counter it ever since. The concern is that tankers could be sailed into UK waters and destroyed either with mines or improvised explosive devices (IEDs).”

The search operations to uncover mines and explosive devices on ships began two years ago, after intelligence emerged to suggest that terrorists had acquired limpet mines which can be attached to a ship’s hull. However, fears may have been heightened recently amid several naval mine explosions and missile attacks on ships off the coast of Yemen and in the Gulf of Aden. As well as searching gas tankers, Royal Navy warships in ports in Egypt and Beirut – now regarded as high-threat locations for terrorist attacks – are also routinely searched.

Terrorist groups have previously threatened to target merchant shipping in the past. Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) was responsible for explosive-laden suicide boat attacks off Yemen on the USS Cole in 2000 and MT Limburg in 2002. In 2014, an article by Hamza Khalid in Al Qaeda’s Resurgence magazine called for attacks on tankers in maritime chokepoints. Titled ‘On Targeting the Achilles Heel of Western Economies’, his article discussed the devastating impact a terrorist organisation could have if they succeeded in disrupting one of the world’s major shipping or oil supply lines. Of resonance, Khalid states: “…even if a single super tanker were to be attacked in one of the chokepoints or hijacked and scuttled in one of these narrow sea lanes, the consequences would be phenomenal”.