COPENHAGEN, June 13: Al Qaeda is planning to carry out attacks on Danish soil, the head of the Scandinavian country’s intelligence service warned in a newspaper interview on Friday.

“We see now ... Al Qaeda behind a targeted training and planning of terror attacks on Danish soil,” PET chief Jakob Scharf said in an interview with free daily Nyhedsavisen.

“Al Qaeda has had, and still has, a strong wish to hurt Denmark and Danish interests,” he added.

The network claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on the Danish embassy in Islamabad last week that killed eight people, including two Pakistanis working at the mission and one Dane of Pakistani origin.

In an Internet statement signed by one of Al Qaeda’s leaders, Mustafa Abu al Yazid, the group said it had carried out the attack “in revenge” for Danish caricatures of the Holy Prophet (pbuh).

“We are keeping an eye on people and networks in Denmark who constitute a concrete threat and who have the will and the ability to carry out an attack,” Scharf said, adding that PET was working to counter the threat.

In Sweden, the head of the intelligence service’s counter-terrorism unit, Mats Paulsson, told the TT news agency on Friday that the agency was monitoring a number of people in the country suspected of travelling abroad for “terrorist training”.—AFP