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In response to message posted by Kirk:

Two bombing suspects arrested - from 23 MSNBC.com:

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Philippine bomb suspects warn of more attacks

Two men charged with attacks that killed 15 civilians

MSNBC NEWS SERVICES

MANILA, Philippines, April 23 — Two men arrested for a deadly series of weekend bombings in the southern Philippines claimed it was part of a “destabilization” campaign that includes targets in the capital, police said Tuesday.

THE SUSPECTS, Bobby Sabilo and Mulikin Adam Ambi, were arrested in a pre-dawn raid Monday in a village outside General Santos, the southern city where three bombs exploded in public places Sunday, killing 15 people and injuring 71.

“From our tactical interrogation ... (the bombing campaign) is not just General Santos, this is throughout the Philippines,” Bartoleme Baluyot, police chief for the central Mindanao region, said by telephone. “Their plan is destabilization, create disturbances.”

City police chief George Aquisap said the men claimed to have received training in the Middle East. Both were charged Tuesday with illegal weapons possession, and police said they were preparing murder charges.

“Our investigation showed that they were trained in making bombs in Malaysia by Malaysian and other foreign trainers. There were six other Filipino Muslims with them during the training and we are now looking for them,” Baluyot said.

Baluyot said witnesses reported seeing them leave a bag in a motorcycle taxi outside a department store, where the bomb that caused all the fatalities exploded. It killed 14 people Sunday, and another victim died Monday night.

Thirty-four people injured in the three blasts remained hospitalized.

THREAT TAKEN SERIOUSLY

Authorities were taking the threat of further bombings seriously. “We don’t know why they want to create disturbances,” Baluyot said. “They said they have people in Manila... so we cannot just laugh that off.”

On Monday, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo sought to calm the nation by ordering a crackdown on so-called terrorists that included a $100,000 reward, a nationwide security alert and plans for curfews and checkpoints where needed.

Police check for evidence after the bomb explosion in front of a department store in General Santos.

A rash of warnings via cell phone text messages — one of the main forms of communication in the Philippines — focused on Manila as the next target. Similar text messages circulated in General Santos just before Sunday’s bombings.

The latest attacks were the latest in a long series of strikes on civilian targets in the country’s troubled south, the bloodiest of which occurred in February 2000 when bombs planted on a ferry by another Islamic rebel group killed 45 people.

A wave of bombings in Manila in December that year killed 14 and wounded over 100.

ORGANIZERS UNCLEAR

Despite a claim of responsibility, police said they were uncertain who organized the bombings, which took place in an area where relatives sometimes belong to different anti-government groups and support each other.

A man who claimed he was from the Muslim extremist group Abu Sayyaf told a radio station an hour before the first blast that 18 bombs had been planted around General Santos. He called back Monday to warn of more attacks in retaliation for a U.S.-backed offensive against the al-Qaida-linked group on Basilan island, also in the southern Philippines.

Sabilo and Ambi were initially described as belonging to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, or MILF. But Baluyot said Tuesday they were former members of another Muslim separatist group with a very similar name, the Moro National Liberation Front, or MNLF.

“It is possible they joined forces with the Abu Sayyaf, which did not have a camp (in General Santos) before,” he said.

Authorities have said armed groups in the south, where Muslim rebels have been fighting to carve out a separate state for years, occasionally forge temporary alliances.

The MNLF signed a peace agreement with the government in 1996. The MILF agreed to a cease-fire last year but has occasionally clashed with government forces despite the truce.

U.S. HELPING FIGHT

The government has vowed to wipe out the Abu Sayyaf, calling it a group of bandits, and U.S. troops are training Philippine soldiers in an effort to help them defeat the guerrillas, who have held missionaries Martin and Gracia Burnham of Wichita, Kan. and a Philippine nurse hostage on Basilan for nearly 11 months.

About 600 more U.S. troops landed in Manila on board the amphibious assault ship USS Fort McHenry on Tuesday to take part in the joint military exercises.

That brought to about 3,200 the number of American soldiers now in the Philippines for training with local troops.

About 1,000 of them are holding counter-terrorism exercises on Basilan, the stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf, and in nearby Zamboanga city.

The rest are deployed on the main island of Luzon in the north of the country for exercises designed to help Philippine forces repulse foreign aggression and “state-sponsored terrorism,” a U.S. military statement said.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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.....Jen

-- posted by JenL_2