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Reuters
PARIS
Al Qaeda's Yemeni arm is losing its ability to export militancy overseas after sustained military pressure on its operations, and Islamic State and Shi'ite militants are instead Riyadh's main internal concern, Saudi Arabian officials said on Wednesday.
The United States and Britain on Tuesday announced new restrictions on carry-on electronic devices on planes from certain airports in the Middle East and North Africa in response to unspecified security threats.
The Saudi interior ministry's chief security spokesman Mansour al Turki told reporters in Paris that he had no specific information on what prompted the new curbs - which also affect Saudi Arabian Airlines - but he suggested there may be a link to al Qaeda in Yemen."The US has said they raided al Qaeda people in Yemen and they were able to gather some information, but I don't know whether they found something linked to this,"he said. Asked whether they believed Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) had the capacity to project operations overseas with innovative bomb designs, including embedding them inside computers, however, the officials said the group had been severely constrained by fighting on multiple fronts.
"They don't have the power to export their activities,"said Abdullah Alshehri, a senior counter-terrorism official from the interior ministry.
