A terrorist bombing on the scale of the Madrid attacks has been averted with the arrests of four Abu Sayyaf members and the confiscation of 36kg of TNT, the Philippine president said yesterday.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who faces a tough campaign for re-election 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, referring to the sprawling capital of more than 10 million people. 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 Feb. 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.
Police officials identified the suspects as Alhamser Manatad Limbong, also known as Kosovo, who allegedly beheaded Sobero; Redondo Cain Dellosa, who allegedly confessed to the ferry bombing; Radzmar Sankula Jul and Abdulrasid Lim.
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