Airports all over the world have been asked by the US Homeland Security to be on the lookout for suspicious stuffed items among luggage after US intelligence concluded that Al Qaeda operatives are being trained to conceal 'nitrocellulose' bombs inside them.
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Intelligence officials have confiscated Al Qaeda manuals and picked up several indications that the terror network is attempting to create a chemical called 'nitrocellulose' to fashion explosive devices that could be smuggled aboard jetliners, media reports said.
"We judge this type of threat to be real and continuing. We have received reports from several credible, independent sources that Al Qaeda is training to build such bombs," the Homeland Security officials were quoted by The Washington Post as saying.
Explosives experts said the detonating power of a nitrocellulose bomb depends on numerous factors, but most particularly on how tightly cotton-like material is packed.
"Producing such explosives," said Gregory G Baur, a former director of the International Association of Bomb
Technicians and Investigators, "requires somebody who has some sophistication and who knows what he is doing."
Items such as buttons, zippers or wristwatches could be used in tandem with tightly packed 'nitrocellulose' as power sources or ignition components to set off a detonation, the directive said.