PARIS ATTACKS COST LESS THAN £7,000 TO PULL OFF, SAY EXPERTS
The Paris attacks would have cost ISIS less than £7,000 to pull off, according to terrorism experts.
Although the operation was sophisticated and devastating, the weapons used were crude and the overheads minimal, they say.
One
counter-terrorism official said the figure was not 'implausible'
because the biggest expense would have the AK-47s bought on the black
market.
Another told NBC News: 'I would note that although the attacks were co-ordinated, the actual method was basic bombs and guns.'
Travel
costs would also have been minimal as most of the attackers were either
based in Paris or just 160 miles away in Brussels.
The
group are known to have hired three small hatchbacks, booked rooms at a
low-budget hotel and rented a safehouse for a week.
Experts
say the costs involved were a fraction of the £85,000 used in the
foiled plot to attack U.S. ships in the Strait of Hormuz in 2002 or the
£48,000 price tag of the suicide and car bombings that killed more than
200 in Bali in 2002.
They
also pale in comparison with the £320,000 spent on 9/11, although that
plot involved extensive travel and pilot training as well as living
expenses over a number of years.
Many terror attacks, however, are carried out on a shoestring.
Others
including the truck bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in
1998 and the bombing of the USS cole in Yemen which killed 17 people in
2000 also cost less than £7,000.
'Terrorism is not an expensive sport,' said one former senior Treasury Department official.
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