Arroyo urges caution following Baghdad, Jakarta blasts

President Arroyo warned her countrymen yesterday to be on alert following the recent bombings in Baghdad and Jakarta.

"We must be on guard after the Jakarta and Baghdad bombings. We are taking pre-emptive measures but the people themselves, through active vigilance, must form the first perimeter of public safety," Arroyo said in a statement.

Arroyo did not say if there were any specific reports of the Philippines being targetted but in the past extremists linked to the al-Qaeda network and the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) regional terror group have carried out bombings and in the country.

"We must keep on fighting until terrorism retreats permanently," Arroyo said, calling for a quick resolution to the bombing of the UN headquarters in Iraq on Tuesday that killed 23 people including two Filipinos.

The August 5 bombing of a hotel in Jakarta is widely suspected to have been the handiwork of the Jemaah Islamiyah which wants to set up an Islamic state spanning several countries, including parts of the southern Philippines.

Philippine police have boosted security measures in anticipation of retaliatory attacks following the recent arrest of suspected terror mastermind Riduan Isamuddin also known as Hambali.

Hambali, a 36 year-old Islamic scholar, is accused of being behind the Bali bombings that killed 202 people last year and has been indicted by Manila in connection with a series of bombings that killed 22 people on December 30, 2000.

The Philippines has been one of the most vocal supporters of the US-led war against terror.

Manila suffered a major setback when JI bomb-maker Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi escaped from the national police jail last month while serving a 17-year prison sentence for explosives possession. – AFP