Plot Against Embassies in Manila

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Philippine authorities have arrested three suspected Middle Easterners suspected of involvement in a plot to bomb the US and three other foreign embassies in Manila. “There is a high probability that they are involved in some kind of plan to sow trouble,” Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita told reporters on the sidelines of an annual anti-terrorism and business security conference. All are Middle Eastern nationals, he said.

One of the militants was arrested in Manila and the two others were separately captured in the southern Philippines.

Ermita refused to provide details, but two senior Filipino security officials told The Associated Press that investigators were verifying intelligence information that the three may have been involved in an active plot to bomb the US, British, Australian and Israeli embassies in Manila.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

Authorities believe the three may have links with the Indonesia-based militant group Jemaah Islamiyah and the Abu Sayyaf, a small but violent southern Philippine-based group blacklisted by Washington as a terror organization.

Both groups have been blamed for deadly bomb attacks, including the February 2004 bombing of a ferry in Manila Bay that killed 116 people in the country’s worst terrorist attack.

Re-posted with permission from www.lekarev.org.