Newspapers have published almost daily reports of foiled or aborted attacks.

One day after President Obama delivered a blistering indictment of "human and systemic failures" leading up to the foiled attack, the battle to assign blame for these failures escalated on Wednesday.

All have been the targets of foiled attacks this year.

Mr Paisley, who is a member of the Northern Ireland Policing Board, said officers contacted him to inform him of the foiled attack.

September 12: Three gunmen and a Syrian security guard were killed in a foiled attack on the U.S. embassy.

The building is considered to have been the intended target of a foiled terrorist attack, involving the hijacking of airplanes as part of the Bojinka plot, which was foiled in 1995.

And it followed a similarly foiled attack against a government building three months earlier.

Many "foiled" terrorist attacks and terror alerts have been based on fabricated intelligence, many of which are believed to have been politically motivated.

There have been a number of other attempted attacks, the most recent being a foiled attack on oil installations in September 2006.

A previously unknown organization called "the army of Allah's supporters" claimed responsibility for the foiled attack.