US closes Manila embassy after threat
US closes Manila embassy after threat
The US embassy temporarily shut its doors in Manila on Tuesday after a security threat. The embassy did not specify the 'probable threat information'.

Manila: The US embassy temporarily shut its doors in Manila on Tuesday after a security threat, with Philippine police warning of potential suicide bombings by Jemaah Islamiah.

Jemaah Islamiah is a regional network of al-Qaeda.

The embassy did not specify the 'probable threat information' in a statement on its website.

Television channel ANC quoted a guard at the embassy as saying a mobile phone text message was received on Monday night from someone named as "Evita" threatening to blow up the embassy.

But anti-US sentiment in the Philippines, a former US colony, has risen in recent weeks with six visiting US soldiers being investigated over allegations they raped a Philippines woman on November 1 after joint military exercises.

"An attack on any US embassy in the world is every Islamic militant's dream," said a Philippine intelligence official, adding that two leading foreign militants hiding on the southern island of Mindanao wanted Indonesians to carry out attacks.

Citing information shared by Jakarta, the police official said that Dulmatin and Umar Patek had asked a contact in central Java, Abdullah Sunata, to send Indonesian recruits to Mindanao to launch suicide bombings in the Philippines.

Dulmatin and Umar Patek, the main suspects in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed nearly 200 people, are high on a US terrorism blacklist.

Washington has offered a reward of $10 million for the arrest of Dulmatin and $1 million for Umar Patek.

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