The authorities in the Philippines have arrested two men and are seeking two more in connection with terrorist bombings that killed 22 people and wounded more than 100 four years ago, officials said on Wednesday. Five almost-simultaneous bombings on Dec. 30, 2000, struck a train and four other targets, including a bus, in metropolitan Manila. It was the country’s worst terrorist attack, attributed to the regional terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, which has been linked to Al Qaeda. The military chief of staff, General Narciso Abaya, refused to identify the two men still at large. He said the others, Mamasao Naga and Abdul Pata, both Filipinos, were captured by army and marine intelligence agents on Monday in the predominantly Muslim southern city of Marawi. "I hope you understand, we cannot give you much details because that will jeopardize our continuing operations," Abaya said. "There are still two terrorists out there."
Abaya said Naga had been responsible for the train bombing, which accounted for nearly all the casualties, while Pata had planted a bomb on the bus, aboard which at least one person was killed. The two suspects were brought in handcuffs into a hall at the military’s national headquarters Wednesday in a brief appearance before news cameras. They wore orange detainees’ shirts and were not allowed to talk. Defense Secretary Eduardo Ermita and the army commander, Lieutenant General Efren Abu, said both men had admitted during interrogation that they were Jemaah Islamiyah members. The military said the two had collaborated with a suspected Jemaah Islamiyah bomb expert from Indonesia, Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, and Filipino militants from the group. Abaya said that Ghozi, who was arrested in January 2002 but escaped and was killed in a shootout with police last year, had been the leader of the Manila bombings.
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Philippine military officials have arrested several Muslim militants they say are linked to the group and have acknowledged that up to 40 Jemaah Islamiyah non-Filipino militants may be at large in the southern Philippines, where a Muslim separatist insurgency has gone on for decades. |