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| Southeast Asia |
| Panic grips Philippines following Bali attacks |
| 2002-10-13 |
| Ummahnews The Philippines has been on heightened alert following Saturday night's bomb attacks in the Indonesian island of Bali which killed close to 200 people, mostly Australian and Western tourists. "We have to consider all possibilities here," presidential National Security Adviser Roilo Golez told reporters. "The national police have been instructed to make sure that we are on heightened alert...to protect possible targets of these acts of terrorism in case there might be some copycat groups here in the Philippines, in case this is regional and not local to Indonesia." Just in case... The Philippines has been rocked in recent weeks by bomb attacks that apparently targetted US troops. The latest occurred on October 2 when an explosion killed an American soldier and two Filipinos near a bar in Zamboanga city. At the start of the current offensive... Foreign Secretary Blas Ople said he had ordered all Philippine diplomatic posts overseas, particularly the Philippine Embassy in Jakarta, "to take extra precautions against possible terrorist attacks". President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo will chair a meeting of her National Security Council tomorrow with the Bali bombings high on agenda. Meanwhile, police said they had detained an Indonesian for questioning about possible links to extremist groups. It said the man was found around the airport gates in southern Zamboanga city when he was arrested on Thursday. Keep looking. There are more where that one came from... Ummah News calls this reaction a panic. It sounds more like heightened watchfulness because we're in a "counteroffensive" by the Bad Guys that's probably staged to try and take heat off Iraq. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |