Johannesburg:
South Africa, which is set to host 2010 FIFA World Cup, faces high risk of a terror attack during the mega football event beginning June 11, according to a report.
"Pakistani and Somali militants are running terror training camps in neighbouring Mozambique and that cells may already have moved into South Africa to plan World Cup attacks," 'Sunday Times' weekly quoted Ronald Sandee, director of terror research group NEFA Foundation, as saying.
"I believe there is an 80 per cent chance of an attack," he said.
The former analyst for the Dutch Ministry of Defence, provided details of three training camps in Mozambique run by "Somalis, Pakistanis, Indians and Bangladeshis," the Johannesburg-based daily claimed.
Meanwhile, intelligence and security authorities said all efforts were taken to meet possible terror attacks, but would not provide details.
"If you comment too much about intelligence, you undermine it," Crime Intelligence head Mark Hankel said.
Sandee had earlier told the US Congress that numerous references (to the attack plan) had been made in closed frequency radio broadcasts and telephone intercepts this month in Algeria, Mali, Pakistan and Yemen.
"Information confirms that several venues will be targeted, some simultaneously, others at random. Reference is also made to the possibility of a kamikaze-type attack," the weekly quoted Sandee as saying.
With millions of spectators expected at the sold-out games across the country for a month, specific targets would be those featuring the US and English sides because of their military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as well the Netherlands and Denmark for "insults" on Prophet Muhammad through publications of cartoons and films, it said.
Analysts and security experts too believe such actions cannot be ruled out.
Frank van Rooyen, a former South African Navy officer and now a senior researcher at the South African Institute for International Affairs, said: "We are definitely vulnerable to suicide bombers and car bombs. All the signs are there that Al-Qaida is planning one of these attacks on the World Cup."