Britons, Westerners told to leave Benghazi after ‘imminent’ terror threat
The UK’s Foreign Office has been advising against travel to the area since last September, but stepped up its warning yesterday in response to “specific” intelligence, telling British nationals to leave “immediately”.
We are aware of a specific and imminent threat to Westerners in Benghazi, and urge any British nationals who remain there against our advice to leave immediately.
One intelligence source told The Daily Telegraph that MI6 had picked up a “credible threat” linked to last week’s Algerian raid, in which al-Qeada militants stormed a BP gas complex and killed dozens of foreign workers. According to the Daily Telegraph, sources in the Libyan city itself suggested the threat had been made against the British School of Benghazi, which announced it would close for a week at least, and other international “institutes”. There have already been several reports of links between Libya and the Algerian hostage takers.