Briefly

Philippines: Bombing suspects arrested

Police have arrested several alleged members of the Muslim Abu Sayyaf guerrillas as suspects in a deadly series of bombings in the southern Philippine city of Zamboanga, officials said today.

Jose Bayani Gucela, a chief police inspector in Zamboanga, said the arrests were made overnight during raids, but he would not say how many people were detained.

Other officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the men were suspects in the bombings of two department stores last week in downtown Zamboanga that killed seven people and injured 152 others.

The suspects were also accused of taking part in a blast at a Roman Catholic shrine Sunday night that killed one and injured 18.

Washington, D.C.: Attack on Internet computers was powerful but brief

An unusually powerful electronic attack briefly crippled nine of the 13 computer servers that manage global Internet traffic this week, officials disclosed Tuesday. But most Internet users didn’t notice because the attack only lasted one hour.

The FBI and White House were investigating. One official described the attack Monday as the most sophisticated and large-scale assault against these crucial computers in the history of the Internet. The origin of the attack was not known.

Seven of the 13 servers failed to respond to legitimate network traffic and two others failed intermittently during the attack, officials confirmed.

New York: Terror suspects plead innocent to federal charges

Six alleged members of a terrorist sleeper cell in suburban Buffalo pleaded innocent Tuesday to charges they trained at an al-Qaida camp in Afghanistan attended by Osama bin Laden.

The six Americans of Yemeni descent were arrested just days after the Sept. 11 anniversary. They are from Lackawanna.

A federal grand jury indicted them Monday on two counts of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization. The charges carry a penalty of up to 15 years in prison.

Prosecutors said the men were awaiting orders from bin Laden’s group to carry out an attack in the United States. However, prosecutors acknowledged there was no evidence the men posed an imminent threat.

Washington, D.C.: U.S. to put Indonesian group on list of terrorists

Moving against Islamic extremists in Asia linked to the al-Qaida network, the State Department will list as a terrorist organization a group suspected in the Bali nightclub bombing that killed more than 180 people, a U.S. official said Tuesday.

The Indonesia-based Jemaah Islamiyah, due to be cited today, has cells operating throughout Southeast Asia. It seeks to create an Islamic state comprising Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the southern Philippines, according to report in May by the State Department’s counterterrorism office.

Listing the group as a terrorist organization will make it a crime to contribute funds to it and will bar its members from receiving visas to enter the United States.