The United States is tightening security at embassies and other facilities in the Middle East and South Asia and advising Americans to be alert and inconspicuous when traveling.
The State Department said Friday that it was taking seriously a renewed threat from exiled Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, who told ABC News he would target all Americans.
“In an apparent reference to Americans, he said that he did not distinguish between military and civilians. Both groups are targets,” the State Department warned.
The announcement noted that bin Laden, during a May 26 news conference, implied that some type of terrorist action could be mounted within the next several weeks.
“The U.S. continues to receive information from other sources, which indicates planning for an attack against Americans in the Persian Gulf,” it said. “We take these threats seriously. . . .”
Bin Laden, who vowed to wage a holy war against U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia because of U.S. support for Israel, broadened his threat in the ABC interview, which was conducted in secret at a camp somewhere inside Afghanistan.
U.S. officials last year branded him the prime suspect in a 1995 car bombing in Riyadh that killed five Americans and in a 1996 attack on a military housing complex in the eastern Saudi town of Khobar that killed 19 U.S. servicemen.
