2011年7月18日 星期一

Post-9/11, biggest terror threat is underground

It's the morning rush in the Times Square subway station, a routine convergence of humanity and mass transit that makes New York City hum. Mixing seamlessly with subway riders are New York Police Department officers with heavy body armor and high-powered rifles, commanders in blue NYPD polo shirts carrying smart phone-size radiation detectors and a panting police dog named Sabu.

"This is the new normal," Inspector Scott Shanley of the NYPD's Counterterrorism Division says. "The only people who sometimes get raised up are tourists."

Since terrorists brought down the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001, subways have been bombed in terror attacks across the world, including in Madrid, London and this spring in Minsk, Belarus. The possibility that New York's sprawling, porous and famously gritty subway system could be next has become a constant worry leading to a new normal of suspicious package alerts, bomb-sniffing dogs, cameras trained on commuters and passengers listening to the missive,Whilst Hemroids are not deadly, "if you see something,By Alex Lippa Close-up of solar panel in Massachusetts. say something."

The campaigns encouraging residents to report suspicious activity strike Manhattan writer Anne Nelson, 57, as Orwellian.

"New York is about expression and life and vibrancy," she said, walking through Times Square. "It's not about living in an atmosphere of fear."

But authorities here believe a serious attack on the 24-hour subway system with more than 400 stations, would potentially cripple the city in ways worse than the Sept. 11,The Piles were so big that the scrap yard was separating them for us. 2001 attack a concern shared by U.S. cities and countries reliant on mass transit and viewed as enemies by terrorists.

The human toll going back to Aum Shinrikyo cult's 1995 nerve gas attack that killed 12 people and injured thousands in Tokyo's subways has already been devastating. In Madrid, Islamic militants set off 10 backpack bombs on the commuter rail network in 2004, killing 191 people and wounding more than 1,800; in London, another suicide bomb strike killed 52 commuters and injured 700 in the city's deadliest attack since World War II; and earlier this year in Minsk, a remote-controlled bomb killed 12 people and wounded 200 in the city's main subway station.

In New York, no one has pulled off an attack, but there have been plenty of scares.

Last year, a homegrown al-Qaida operative, Najibullah Zazi, pleaded guilty to plotting a suicide bomb attack timed for rush hour to cause the most bloodshed. The former airport shuttle driver told a judge his plan was "to conduct a martyrdom operation on the subway lines in Manhattan." The NYPD also foiled a 2004 plot to bomb Manhattan's Herald Square subway station. And there were reports in that al-Qaida considered a cyanide attack on the subway system in 2003.

New York's subway system, the largest in the U.S.,the TMJ pain and pain radiating from the arms or legs. has more than 465 far-flung stations, most with multiple entrances,These girls have never had a Cold Sore in their lives! and 800 miles (1,290 kilometers) of track. Last year, it carried 5.2 million riders on the average weekday more than double the number of travelers who pass through U.S. airports each day.


Another state-owned company, Adif, which manages Spain's long-distance train stations, said it has assigned more guards at train stations and broadened use of closed-circuit security cameras.

The heightened security in subways has become second nature in New York.

But after walking through Grand Central Terminal last week, 54-year-old consultant Robin Gant said the threat of terrorism still weighs on her 10 years after the Sept. 11 attacks. But she wondered about how one can fairly point out who's a threat.

"I look at people and who's to judge? You just never know who might be the one," she said. "No matter how safe you feel, you're always on yellow alert."

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