Police 'aware' smaller bomb attacks in horizon

Police 'aware' smaller bomb attacks in horizon

Jim Gomez, Associated Press/Manila

Indonesian police had evidence suggesting that militants may resort to smaller suicide attacks rather than powerful truck bombs before the deadly Oct. 1 Bali bombings, a U.S. terrorism expert said on Thursday.

Jamaah Islamiyah, believed to be the al-Qaeda network's main ally in Southeast Asia, has been blamed for the attacks on three packed restaurants on the Indonesian resort island that killed three bombers and 20 other people and wounded more than 100.

In an anti-terror sweep from June to July, Indonesian police arrested 17 suspected militants and found in rebel safe houses bomb materials similar to those used in the Oct. 1 attacks -- including TNT powder, detonating cords and ball bearings, Zachary Abuza said in an assessment of the attacks sent to The Associated Press.

"There were plenty of clues as early as June and July to suggest that JI was going to shift to smaller suicide bombers, rather than truck bombs," said Abuza, a terrorism expert and senior fellow of the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Bombings blamed on JI first struck Bali in 2002, killing 202 people.

Abuza said Indonesian authorities believed that militants would not hit Bali a second time, or other tourism hubs, but would focus on attacks targeting "other pillars of the Indonesian economy," citing a report saying Indonesian police believed that the next target would be a Western mining concern.

While Indonesian police have not disclosed any indication that the Oct. 1 Bali suicide bombers trained in the southern Philippines, Abuza raised concerns over reports of terror training in the southern region of Mindanao.

A terror cell suspected in the latest Bali attacks had sent members to the southern Philippines for training, he said.

"The weak link in the war on terror in Southeast Asia continues to be the Philippines," Abuza said.

Philippine officials have rejected such criticism, saying intense crackdowns have led to the arrests of several JI members, prevented attacks, disrupted terror training and kept a small group of Indonesian militants on the run in Mindanao.

A confidential report in August from the Philippines' National Security Council said JI training courses, which started in mid- 1998, have been disrupted by military offensives, but could be resumed because of the presence of about 25 members of the group in the southern Philippines.

Philippine police official Rodolfo Mendoza, who has done extensive research on terrorism, said the apparent shift in type of attacks from remote-detonated bombs to suicide bombings may have been caused by a realignment of underground Islamic groups.

Mendoza said some members of the cells blamed for the latest Bali attacks belonged to local insurgent groups in Indonesia and seemed to be focusing on the use of suicide bombers.

"There should be a new audit of these groups, so we would know each group's objective and mode of attacking," he said. "If we know what they are and how they attack, we would have a better idea of where they will next attack."