Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo says security forces have foiled a plan to bomb civilian targets in Manila, a terror strike she says that was on the scale of the attacks in Madrid earlier this month. An anti-terrorism task force has arrested six members of Islamic extremist group Abu Sayyaf and seized TNT explosives.
| Security officials said later that some of the suspects, who were detained over the last few days in and around Manila after weeks of surveillance, also allegedly have links to Jemaah Islamiyah, considered to be al-Qaida's regional arm. |
"We have pre-empted a Madrid-level attack on the metropolis by capturing an explosive cache of 80 pounds — or 36 kilograms — of TNT which was intended to be used for bombing malls and trains in metro manila," she told national television on Tuesday. Philippines Defense Secretary Eduardo Ermita told CNN the Manila plot was foiled by a series of arrests that began on March 22. He said several of the suspects had been linked to other attacks or extremist violence in the Philippines. One of the suspects arrested claimed responsibility for a February 27 blast and fire aboard a passenger ferry that killed more than 100 people, Ermita said. The Abu Sayyaf claimed responsibility for the incident but officials have not yet determined the cause of the blast. The other suspects were implicated in an October 2002 bombing in the southern city of Zamboanga that killed one U.S. serviceman, the beheading of American hostage Guillermo Sobero in the same year and a string of kidnappings. "There are follow-up operations going on," Ermita said, noting the investigation was ongoing. "They [the four suspects] continue to be under tactical interrogation to find out if there are other cells here in the metropolis or in others places in the Philippines and to find out whether they still have the capability of undertaking any kind of activity in case they still have some explosives in their possession."
Additional: The Radio Mindanao Network, based in the south of the Philippines, said on Monday it had received a warning from Abu Sayyaf that the movement would take "appropriate action" if its latest demands were not met. These include the release of Islamist militants from local jails, all terror suspects in the American prison at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba freed, the removal of all Christians from the southern Philippines and foreign troops to leave the Arabian peninsula. Yup, that sounds like a al-Qaida press release to me. |
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