Nations Brace for Retaliation

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Police standing guard at London's Heathrow Airport were part of security-force deployments in a number of major cities to guard against terrorist attacks on Monday.

Governments around the world, warning against complacency in fighting terrorism, prepared for the chance of retaliatory attacks in the wake of Osama bin Laden's death.

WSJ's Alistair MacDonald discusses stepped-up security worldwide following the killing of Osama bin Laden. The U.S. State Department has issued worldwide travel alerts for citizens.

In the U.S., Africa, Southeast Asia, Europe, officials said they were watching out for potential reprisals from Islamist terrorists intent on avenging bin Laden's killing at the hands of U.S. forces in Pakistan.

Interpol, the international police cooperation organization, Monday cautioned of a "heightened terror risk from al Qaeda-affiliated or al Qaeda-inspired terrorists as a result of bin Laden's death."

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The U.S. State Department sent out an unusual world-wide travel alert shortly after President Barack Obama's televised speech announcing bin Laden's death Sunday night. The State Department warned Americans around the world of the "enhanced potential for anti-American violence given recent counter-terrorism activity in Pakistan."

Long before Osama bin Laden's death, his al-Qaeda terror network adapted itself to operate in a world without him, ensuring that the threat posed by the group will live well beyond his demise. Margaret Coker has details from Saudi Arabia.

Security experts believe that the U.S. could be at greater risk of attack from Al Qaeda in the wake of the death of Osama bin Laden. Even so, as WSJ's Neil Hickey reports, they support the Dept. of Homeland Security, which so far hasn't raised the official threat level.

The alert noted that U.S. government facilities around the world remain at a "heightened state of alert." The alert expires Aug. 1.

The alert also said the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad and the consulates in Lahore, Karachi and Peshawar would be closed to the public until further notice.

The Department of Homeland Security just scrapped the old color-coded terror-warning system in favor of more detailed terror alerts. As of late Monday, the department had no terror alerts on its Web page.

The death of bin Laden "places al Qaeda's new leadership under extreme pressure to prove al Qaeda is a viable organization," said Raphael Perl, head of the Action Against Terrorism Unit at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Al Qaeda may within days launch a large-scale attack or several smaller attacks "as a vehicle to introduce its new leadership," Mr. Perl said.

"Like any organization that has suffered a serious blow, they will want to show in some way that they are still able to operate," U.K. Foreign Secretary William Hague said in a BBC interview.

Jihadi Web forums lit up overnight Sunday with thousands of comments on the news of bin Laden's death, ranging from initial disbelief to euphoria that the man they call the "sheik" had been "martyred."

"If he is alive, we will take revenge, and if he is a martyr, we will take revenge," read one post on an Arabic-language jihadi forum, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute.

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A post on Al Sahab Islamist website said: "America, do not be too happy and don't celebrate. You crusaders will soon cry hard for killing the lion of Islam."

Many governments were already on a heightened state of alert due to vague but persistent intelligence suggesting an attack may be imminent in Europe or elsewhere. The threat level in the U.K., for example, has been listed as "severe," meaning an attack is highly likely, since early 2010.

Terrorism experts said al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the terror network's most active affiliate, could launch retaliatory attacks. AQAP, as the group is known, was behind the failed 2009 Christmas Day airliner bombing attempt and the foiled 2010 air-cargo plot.

"AQAP is a likely candidate for retributive attacks, although attacks against the West take some time to plan and carry out—and the branch faces its own organizational limitations," said Leah Farrall, an Australian counterterrorism analyst. "Localized reactions against U.S. and Western interests in the Arabian peninsula are more likely in the short term," she said.

On Monday, concern about the possibility of retaliation seemed especially acute in Africa and Southeast Asia, where al Qaeda offshoots have been active in recent years.

Uganda, where twin bomb blasts last year killed about 80 people during the World Cup soccer tournament in South Africa, put its security forces on high alert. Lt. Col. Felix Kuliagye, Uganda's army and defense spokesman, said security has been beefed up at potential targets, including key army and other government installations, public buildings, shopping malls, hotels and busy entertainment places.

In Somalia, President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed also said his government was bracing for possible reprisal attacks by al Qaeda-backed groups. "We don't want to say what kind of preparations we made, but we are staying alerted," he told a news conference at his palace.

In Southeast Asia—a major theater of operations for al Qaeda over the past dozen years—the Philippines, in particular, was running threat assessments on al Qaeda-linked groups operating there. Officials in Indonesia said retaliatory strikes remained a possibility and police in Malaysia said they were stepping up security in key locations around the country. The most immediate danger could be in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, where Islamist radicals have begun operating in smaller and smaller groups to evade a crackdown on extremists there.

In the U.K., the Cobra committee, which manages responses to high-priority security issues, convened to discuss potential repercussions and the country told its foreign embassies and military bases to review their security. The French government was considering raising its alert level for airports.

A senior German intelligence official said German security officials were increasing security around U.S. offices and installations, but officials didn't see options for increasing security measures more broadly without new specific warnings to act upon.

Officials for Eurotunnel S.A., the company that runs Eurostar trains between England and the continent, noted a heightened police presence at their terminals in Brussels, Paris and London, a spokeswoman said. "But we don't run security operations, so we haven't had to change anything," she said.

—Keith Johnson, David Crawford, and Summer Said contributed to this article.

Write to James Hookway at james.hookway@wsj.com and Alistair MacDonald at alistair.macdonald@wsj.com

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