Terrorist strike averted in Philippines

A terrorist bombing on the scale of the Madrid attacks was averted in the Philippines with the arrests of four Abu Sayyaf members and the confiscation of 380 pounds of TNT, the president said in Manila.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who faces a tough campaign for re-election on May 10, said the explosives were to have been used to bomb trains and shopping malls in Manila.

“We have prevented a Madrid-level attack in the metropolis,” she said.

The March 11 train bombings in Madrid, Spain, left at least 190 people dead.

She said one of the men arrested claimed responsibility for a February 27 explosion and fire aboard a passenger ferry that killed more than 100 people.

Officials have not concluded what caused the disaster.

The other Abu Sayyaf suspects were implicated in an October 2002 bombing in the southern city of Zamboanga that killed one US serviceman, the beheading of American hostage Guillermo Sobero the same year and a string of kidnappings, Arroyo said.

Sobero was among 20 people – including three Americans – who were kidnapped by the Abu Sayyaf from the Dos Palmas resort on Palawan island, southwest of Manila, in May 2001.

Arroyo called the suspects “murderers” and said the evidence against them was “strong and airtight”.