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Manila on alert as 14 die in terror bombings
A wave of bombings in the Philippines capital Manila killed at least 14 people yesterday and wounded more than 100.
Hidden bombs, the suspected work of Muslim rebels from the country's south, exploded at the airport, a park near the US embassy, a hotel and aboard a bus and a train. The most devastating explosion was in the front coach of a crowded train as it pulled into Blumentritt station. At least 11 people were killed and about 60 wounded. Bodies were laid out on the platform, including one of a young girl. Minutes later a second bomb exploded at a bus terminal in the suburb of Quizon city, killing at least one and injuring 15, followed shortly by an explosion at a fuel depot at Manila's Ninoy Aquino airport. At least six were hurt but the depot did not explode. The fourth bomb exploded on a bench in a park near the US embassy.
At least one of the packages was disguised as a wrapped present which exploded as a policeman tried to defuse it. The first four bombs exploded almost simultaneously at around noon. Panic quickly spread in the city of 12 million people after the explosions. Streets were deserted by early evening and the usually crowded shopping malls virtually empty.
Suspicion for the bombings has fallen on the Abu Sayyaf Muslim rebel group, which is fighting government forces, mainly in the south of the country, and kidnapped a group of foreign tourists early this year. The attacks come against a background of deep political turbulence, with embattled President Joseph Estrada on trial before the country's senate on corruption charges.
The attacks led to several commercial centres being evacuated throughout the day on false alarms. Light railway transit officials also said they will start opening all packages of passengers immediately as a security routine. A bomb also exploded at a gas station near the Dusit hotel. One bomb expert was killed and another injured as they tried to defuse it. The bomb, which exploded near the US embassy, wounded at least nine, blasting a 2ft crater in the ground and damaging buildings 200 yards from the embassy. The bomb apparently was not directed at the embassy itself. Lonnie Kelley, acting spokesman at the US embassy, said the building was not damaged and knew of no injured staff members. No extra security measures were being taken.
Extracted from Guardian Unlimited 2000, Sunday December 31, 2000
Ulster bomb as Archbishop urges law and order
A bomb attack on a bar in north Belfast was today being investigated by the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
An explosive device containing nuts and bolts and packed into a traffic cone exploded outside the Boundary Bar on the Shore Road shortly before midnight. No one was injured in the attack, for which police were trying to establish a motive.
The incident occurred just hours before the Church of Ireland Primate, Archbishop Robin Eames, delivered a Christmas Day message urging the government to face up to the culture of violence and community fear which had replaced 30 years of violence in Northern Ireland. This was the "one vital challenge" facing the community, he said in his sermon at St Patrick's Cathedral, Armagh. In a hard-hitting message, he said there had to be "realism and determination" on the part of ministers. He added, "Political progress is essential - but political progress can never be a substitute for the exercise of basic law and order on our streets and in our homes." The Archbishop stated, "This is a situation which government needs to face up to with realism and determination." Somehow fear had to be removed, so that those who were intent on destroying or injuring lives would know they would inevitable pay the price of detection and conviction, he said.
Guardian Unlimited Monday December 25, 2000
Terrorists target lab's shareholders
POLICE are warning shareholders of a laboratory which carries out tests on animals that they are the targets of a terrorist campaign.
Special Branch has alerted police forces in England and Wales to the intimidation tactics of the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty group (Shac). The forces are warning shareholders of Huntingdon Life Sciences that their families, homes and cars could be at risk. Many shareholders have already received abusive telephone calls threatening violence if they do not sell their shares.
The animal rights group has published shareholders' names on the internet and is urging supporters to "adopt a director" to harass and intimidate. As well as the names of individual shareholders, they have also listed corporations that have shares in Huntingdon Life Sciences including the Bank of New York, the Bank of Scotland Branch Nominees Ltd, ASCO Nominees Ltd, Barclays Stockbrokers Ltd, Barclayshore Nominees Ltd, Equitable Life Assurance Society, and Lloyds Bank Nominees.
One victim, who cannot be named for safety reasons, has had scores of threatening phone calls in recent weeks. He said: "They call at all hours, sometimes after midnight and up to eight times a day. This is a form of terrorism and it's very frightening. It should not be happening in a democracy." The retired businessman from Surrey has given police a dossier of the hate mail. The file includes invoices for goods sent to his home by mail order firms. The victim's name is misspelt several ways and refers to him as Ms. Other shareholders have been sent three-piece suites, garden sheds, sex toys and pornographic videos and magazines.
The group has already targeted the laboratory's 750 employees and executives at client firms, mostly pharmaceutical companies. Nine staff have had their cars torched wih petrol bombs this year. The activists are also writing to their victims' neighbours, informing them that they live near a shareholder of a company that carries out animal experiments. The information includes a picture of a mutilated monkey and urges: "Let them know what you think about animal cruelty."
The campaign has had results. The firm's share price has tumbled to 5p. Earlier this year, Phillips and Drew, the pension fund manager, sold its 10 per cent holding in HLS for 1p a share after directors received hoax bomb threats.
Extracted from the Daily Telegraph Sunday 3 December 2000
Beach man charged in explosives discovery
A man who police believe constructed 10 explosive devices and stored them at a halfway house for recovering substance abusers was charged on Tuesday and is being held without bond at the Virginia Beach city jail.
Frank J. Steppe was charged with the felony offense of manufacture, possession or use of an explosive device. Other charges against Steppe are pending, according to a spokesman for the Virginia Beach Fire Department. Steppe is scheduled to be arraigned today in General District Court. On Nov. 13, bomb squad members removed 10 devices from Oxford House, at 315 16th St., near the Oceanfront.
Someone cleaning one of the resident's rooms discovered the bombs, which included several types of homemade explosive devices, authorities said. The bomb squad transported the devices in a disposal truck to the rural Creeds area of Virginia Beach, where they were rendered harmless.
29 November, PilotOnline
Police alert over Christmas terror
BRITISH police were today treating seriously a threat of a pre-Christmas terrorist attack by an IRA breakaway group after the seizure of arms and explosives.
A publicity campaign urging the public to vigilance has involved police press conferences, media messages and posters such as one proclaiming: "You're selling your car? They're buying a car bomb." A dissident republican paramilitary group calling itself the Real IRA is the focus of suspicions.
The Real IRA is fanatically opposed to the Northern Ireland peace process involving the mainstream Irish Republican Army and its political mouthpiece Sinn Fein, together with Protestants. A series of incidents in Britain in recent months has prompted police to step up precautions. In July, a bomb device was defused on a railway track, disrupting celebrations of the 100th birthday of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. On September 20, a missile was fired at the London headquarters of MI6, Britain's espionage agency.
David Veness, Assistant Commissioner of Specialist Operations at Scotland Yard, said: "We are concerned that the present series of terrorist crimes will continue. There is a real danger of harm to the public." Yesterday, a headline in the weekly newspaper, The Observer, read: "Real IRA ready to blitz Britain," quoting security sources.
A haul of weapons seized by police in Northern Ireland was on Saturday linked by several politicians to the Real IRA. Two men and a woman were held. Two weeks ago police seized a 250-kilogram bomb in the process of being assembled, said to have been intended for an attack in London. The latest finds came as the British and Irish governments joined forces to urge US authorities to designate the Real IRA a terrorist organisation to prevent it fundraising in the United States.
28 November 2000
Jews and Arabs race-hate crimes rise
MUSLIM children have been abused at school, and attacks on Jews and their institutions in Australia reached record levels since the outbreak of violence in the Middle East in late September.
There have been l00 incidents of anti-Semitism reported in Australia - the most since records began after World War II, Jewish leaders said yesterday. Sixteen of the incidents have involved violence, including two fire-bomb attacks on synagogues in Sydney and one in Canberra, and an attack on the Jewish Museum in Melbourne.
There have been 36 threatening phone calls, 35 complaints of hate mail, graffiti, leaflets and posters, and 13 cases of verbal harassment. President of the Canberra Jewish Community, Alan Shroot, said the media were partly to blame because "shockingly racist' reports had been published that put too much blame on Israel. "The situation would be much improved if one person were to be prosecuted for these attacks on Jewish institutions, but there has never been such a prosecution in Australia," Dr Shroot said.
Executive Council of Australian Jewry national vice-president Jeremy Jones said not all 100 incidents could be directly linked to the Middle East situation, but he had been concerned at the tone of speeches at an anti-Israel rally in Sydney last month. Halla Marbani, a member of the Australian Arabic Council, said in Melbourne that more than 20 cases of alleged racial vilification had been registered with the council in eight weeks.
From an article By Linda Christmas at News Limited, News Online 28 November 2000
Dog Dies After Biting Tennis Ball Bomb
Investigators tried today to determine the type of explosive used in a booby-trap bomb the size of a tennis ball that killed a dog during the weekend. The 80-pound chocolate Labrador retriever suffered severe injuries Saturday when it bit down on what seemed to be a tennis ball wrapped in tape.
A veterinarian euthanized the animal, said Lt. Mike Hefley, a spokesman for the Portland Police Department. A game of catch Gerald Curtis, a friend of the dog's owners, was walking the 3-year-old female named Ivy when he found the ball in front of his house in a residential neighborhood in southeast Portland. Hefley said that Curtis used the ball to play catch with Ivy until the dog "chomped down" on the ball, detonating the explosive.
Curtis was about 6 feet away from the dog and was not injured by the blast, which caused no other significant damage. The dog's body and the remains of the ball are being examined for fragments and clues to the explosive material involved, Hefley said. The ball appears to be a booby trap left for any random person to find. "I would have to think it was deliberate," he said.
ATF: common explosives John McMahon, the agent in charge of the Portland office of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said that "tennis ball bombs" appear to be fairly common in the area. He described them as tennis balls filled with black powder, sometimes with a fuse inserted through a hole drilled in the ball's cover.
The homemade devices have been found on the street and during police searches, McMahon said. About two years ago, a young girl was injured when she found a ball and played with it. Generally, the bombs have about the same explosive power as an M-80. They are most common around July 4 and appear to be dangerous pranks rather than serious attempts to cause injury, McMahon added. "Obviously, when an explosive is confined like that it can cause an explosion that can cause serious injury or death," he said.
Nov. 27, 2000 APB News.com
