Israel cuts warning, UK removes Arugam Bay threats from Sri Lanka travel advisory
Israel cancels the warning, and the UK takes the Arugam Bay threats off of the Sri Lanka travel alert.Following the arrest of multiple individuals, Israel lowered its threat level from 4 to 2, while the United Kingdom deleted any mention of a potential attack in Arugam Bay from its standard travel advisory, according to a media source.
Remarks about a potential attack on Arugam Bay were taken out of the amended UK travel advice.
A governmental agency reportedly revoked its own travel advisory for its residents, according to Israeli media sources.
“The National Security Council, which publishes travel advisories, said it was lowering the warning level for Sri Lanka’s Arugam Bay area from four, which indicates a highly credible threat, to two, indicating a milder occasional threat,” the Times of Israel newspaper said.
An affidavit submitted to a U.S. federal court late last week claims that on October 28, Farhad Shakeri, an Afghani who was recruited by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, told the FBI that he and a co-conspirator had been given instructions to organize a mass shooting operation against Israelis in Arugam Bay.
“The accomplice, whom the filing identified as one of three people arrested by Sri Lankan authorities a day after the warning was issued, had agreed to provide AK-47s and other weapons for the attack, according to the complaint,” the report said.
“The accomplice was unnamed, but was said to have served prison time with Shakeri in the US.”