Al Qaeda-backed terrorists plotted to blow up a train traveling from Penn Station to Canada — with the attack occurring as it crossed a bridge near Niagara Falls, authorities said yesterday.
But the plot — unrelated to the Boston Marathon bombing — was foiled when Canadian Mounties arrested two suspects in Montreal and near Toronto and the FBI seized a Tunisian man in New York.
The Canadian suspects “were receiving support from al Qaeda elements located in Iran” in the form of “direction and guidance,” the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said.
But there is no indication the Tehran government had sponsored an attack, the RCMP said.
Canadian authorities were believed to have been tipped off about one of the plotters by members of the Muslim community in Canada.
The Mounties said the suspects conspired to attack one of Canada’s state-run VIA trains in the Toronto area. They said it would have been a “major terrorist attack.”
Sources told The Post that the plotters planned to use explosives to derail Amtrak’s Maple Leaf train when it reached Niagara Falls.
The train leaves Penn Station each day on a 12-hour trip up the Hudson Valley, then turns through western New York and crosses into Canada, where it becomes a VIA train that terminates at Toronto’s Union Station.
The targeted bridge was not identified, but the Maple Leaf makes a dramatic crossing of the Niagara River each day over the picturesque Whirlpool Rapids Bridge.
The alleged key plotters, Chiheb Esseghaier, 30, and Raed Jaser, 35, had been under surveillance since August as part of an investigation code-named Smooth, authorities said.
“These individuals had the capacity and intent to carry out these criminal acts,” the RMCP said, but “there was no imminent threat.”
The RMCP said the men “watched trains and railways in the greater Toronto area,” but the plot apparently never got past “the planning stage.”
Sources said the men did not get to the point of obtaining explosives.
Officials in Canada said the men arrested there are not Canadian citizens but declined to say where they are from. They would not confirm reports that one of them is Tunisian and the other from United Arab Emirates.
Additional reporting by Josh Margolin and Bruce Golding