Al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the plan to blow up a Northwest Airline plane from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day according to various national and international media reports on Monday evening.

The announcement was made on the internet by an Al-Qaeda group based on the Arabian Peninsula just prior to US president Barack Obama’s first public statement on the failed terrorist attack.
In his address, Obama said the US ‘will not rest’ until those behind the attack are brought to justice. And he praised the ‘quick and heroic actions’ of passengers and crew, saying this had averted disaster.
In its statement, Al-Qaeda said it had co-ordinated the attack with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and that only a ‘technical fault’ had caused it to fail.
Abdulmutallab was over-powered by passengers and crew and handed to the authorities in the US when the plane landed at Detroit. He is charged with attempting to blow up the Airbus A330, which had nearly 300 people on board, as it made its final descent to Detroit.
The website message said the attempted bombing was in response to US attacks against its operatives in Yemen, reports the BBC. Washington has stepped up military assistance to Yemen’s offensive against al-Qaeda militants.
At the weekend, US officials said that Abdulmutallab had told investigators that Al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen had supplied him with the bomb, says the BBC.
The Yemeni government has confirmed that Abdulmutallab lived in the country between August and December, according to media reports.