Terror plot foiled

last updated 8 January 2015

Amman

Jordan’s government said this week that it had broken up an al Qaida plot to kill as many as 80,000 people by detonating trucks filled with 20 tons of explosives and toxic chemicals. The blast would have created a mile-wide chemical cloud that would have enveloped the U.S. Embassy, the headquarters of Jordanian intelligence, and the prime minister’s office, the government said. In a series of raids, Jordanian security forces killed four suspected al Qaida members, arrested three, and seized a huge cache of explosives, nerve gas, sulfuric acid, and other poisonous chemicals. U.S. intelligence officials told CNN that they believed the Jordanian plot was a “big deal.”