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| Southeast Asia |
| JI regrouping in Mindanao |
| 2005-03-29 |
| Jemaah Islamiah and allied regional terror groups may be using southern Philippine training camps to build networks and share their deadly expertise, Singapore's interior minister said Tuesday. Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng said coordinated bomb attacks last month in the Philippines highlighted an "urgent need" to disrupt and dismantle these camps in MinÂÂdanao Island. Addressing a regional security conference, Wong noted a trend toward a "high level of coordination" involving different but allied terror groups in staging multiple strikes. The southern Philippine camps could provide militants from the Jemaah Islamiah and its allied groups with a venue to fraternize with each other and share expertise in mounting terror attacks, he said. "What may be occurring in these camps is that the previous segregation of Jemaah Islamiah and other groups, including Filipino trainees, is no longer observed," Wong told the global security Asia conference and exhibition. "This will lead to greater collaborative networking among members of different groups and a dissemination of terror methods characteristic of Jemaah Islamiah operatives who had been trained by the al-Qaeda." The Valentine's Day bombings that killed eight people and wounded 150 in Makati City and two southern Philippine cities demonstrated the coordination involving these fraternal terror groups, Wong noted. "This is a trend that bears watching," he warned. "More than that, it underlines the urgent need to disrupt and dismantle the training sites in Mindanao which continue to train these jihadist fraternal groups in the region," he added. Security experts have said the camps are located in the jungle-clad mountains bordering several provinces in the central Mindanao area, a stronghold of the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |