While there are warnings of imminent attacks on aircraft and other elaborate terrorist plots that could kill hundreds, security chiefs believe that al-Qaeda is increasingly targeting specific figures.

The US authorities are investigating whether al-Qaeda had a hand in the two recent attempts to blow up Paul Bremer, the US civil administrator in Baghdad.

A roadside bomb was detonated as his convoy left Baghdad airport earlier this month. He revealed that it was the second attempt on his life.

President Musharraf escaped unhurt last week when suicide bombers in cars packed with explosives rammed his motorcade at a petrol station near his offices in Rawalpindi.

Fifteen people, including the two attackers and four policemen, were killed and 45 injured. It was the second attempt to kill the Pakistani leader in the past fortnight.

Military commanders in Islamabad have blamed al-Qaeda. The group has also been accused of being behind at least two recent attempts to murder President Karzai of Afghanistan.

It was only after another botched assassination, in Riyadh on Monday, that the Saudi authorities disclosed that the country’s top counter-terrorism official had been shot and wounded. Major-General Abdelaziz al-Huweirini, who is third in command of the Interior Ministry, is said to have been working closely with CIA agents in Riyadh, and was the target of an assassination attempt this month.

In Monday’s attack, the target, another senior figure in the Interior Ministry who is closely linked to the ruling Royal Family, had just left his car when the bomb exploded.

The device was not designed to cause indiscriminate deaths. Until now the preferred tactic for al-Qaeda militants has been to cause as many casualties as possible with a suicide attack on a spectacular target.

One Western intelligence official said: “Al-Qaeda tacticians realise that targeted assassination can seriously damage its opponents by removing key figures or making high-profile characters change their travel plans or their public appearances.”

With America facing a presidential election in 2004, the prospect of al-Qaeda killers operating in the US will cause further concern. Some of al-Qaeda’s western recruits, now in US custody, told how they were schooled in the tactics of how to assassinate public figures during their training at camps in Afghanistan.

Iraqi and US officials are investigating reports that al-Qaeda trained extremists helped to plan the bomb attack on the UN headquarters in Baghdad in August that killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN envoy.

Turkish investigators are questioning extremists arrested after the bombing of the British Consulate in Istanbul last month after claims that al-Qaeda had a part in the attacks. One was directed at an office of Roger Short, the Consul-General, who was killed in the bombing.

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