Toronto ? Police said Monday more arrests are likely in an alleged plot to bomb buildings in Canada, while intelligence officers sought ties between the 17 suspects and Islamic terror cells in the United States and five other nations.

A court said authorities had charged all 12 adults arrested over the weekend with participating in a terrorist group. Other charges included importing weapons and planning a bombing. The charges against five minors were not made public.

The Parliament of Canada, in Ottawa, is believed to be among targets the group discussed. Toronto Mayor David Miller said CN Tower, a downtown landmark, and the city’s subway were not targets as had been the speculated in local media, but declined to identify sites that were.

A Muslim prayer leader who knew the oldest suspect, 43-year-old Qayyum Abdul Jamal, told The Associated Press on Monday that Jamal’s sermons at a storefront mosque were “filled with hate” against Canada.

Authorities said more arrests were expected, possibly this week, as police pursue leads about a group that they say was inspired by the violent ideology of the al-Qaida terror network.

“We’ve by no means finished this investigation,” Mike McDonell, deputy commissioner for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, told AP. “In fact, you might look at it that, really, we’re just starting with the arrests. We have a responsibility to follow every lead.”

Although both Canadian and U.S. officials said over the weekend there was no indication the purported terror group had targets outside Ontario, McDonell told AP on Monday that there are “foreign connections,” but he would not elaborate.

In Washington, a spokesman for the National Security Council at the White House, said President Bush spoke with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper about the case Monday afternoon, but gave no specifics of what was discussed.

“Prime Minister Harper called the president to update him on the situation involving the arrest of 17 individuals in Toronto who are charged with terrorism-related offenses,” spokesman Frederick Jones said.

Responding to the arrests, the U.S. Border Patrol stepped up vigorous inspections of traffic entering the country from Canada and put agents on overtime on high alert along the 4,000-mile border, Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar told reporters in Washington on Monday.

A U.S. law enforcement official said investigators were looking for connections between those detained in Canada and suspected Islamic militants held in the United States, Britain, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Denmark and Sweden.

American authorities have established that two men from Georgia who were charged this year in a terrorism case had been in contact with some of the Canadian suspects via computer, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing.

Prosecutors have said the Georgia men, Ehsanul Islam Sadequee and Syed Haris Ahmed, traveled to Washington to shoot “casing videos” of the Capitol and other potential targets.