Officials: Four overseas plots foiled as terrorist groups keep agitating

WASHINGTON -- U.S. authorities have foiled four bombing plots overseas since Sept. 11, but evidence grows that loosely knit terrorist cells are agitating to strike again, government officials say.

Over the last month, 225 people overseas have been rounded up in about a dozen countries based on U.S. and foreign intelligence indicating they were involved in plotting or assisting terrorism, the officials said.

The officials, speaking only on condition of anonymity, said intelligence reports on potential new threats to U.S. interests have grown in quality and quantity over the last week, prompting some of the starkest warnings to date to the American public.

Most of the evidence doesn't point to specific targets, but rather to "a clearer picture of several terrorist cells looking to strike," one U.S. official told The Associated Press.

The FBI believes several people involved in plotting remain at large in the United States and across Europe and the Middle East, the officials said.

Overseas, U.S. officials working with foreign governments have identified and disrupted plans to bomb four U.S. diplomatic and military sites, the sources told the AP.

The officials said the plots involved attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Paris, an American building in Turkey, embassy structures in Yemen and a NATO building in Brussels, Belgium.

Yemeni authorities have been searching for a dozen Arabs, several connected to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, who entered the country from Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, officials said.

Attorney General John Ashcroft said Sunday the FBI still is searching for about 190 people it believes may have involvement or information.