Police placed on heightened alert nationwide

POLICE nationwide were placed on heightened alert on Saturday over fears the country’s local Islamists could try to emulate the Jakarta hotel bombings.

The public was also urged to name anybody acting suspiciously or leaving any baggage behind in public places like malls, bus terminals and hotels, said Senior Supt. Leonardo Espina, Philippine National Police (PNP) spokesman.

“We are in touch with security details of hotels and places of heavy public convergence like malls and terminals,” he said, adding that police have deputized community watch groups “to check for all suspicious looking persons” and vehicles in public places.

“We are on heightened alert in Metro Manila and full alert in Mindanao,” Espina said. Islamic militants with links to the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) and al-Qaeda are known to operate in Mindanao.

Espina said police were told to intensify security checkpoints on highways and roads in and around Manila.

Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno said more than 200 closed circuit television cameras (CCTV) were to be installed in public areas in Manila beginning Saturday to increase police surveillance capability.

He said the cameras would be placed in so-called soft targets including hotels, malls, movie theaters and bus terminals.

Ordnance experts and canine units were also deployed, he said.

Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo in a statement said the Philippines “strongly condemns” the bombing of two five-star hotels in Jakarta on Friday.

“These dastardly and inhumane acts all the more reinforce the need for vigilance and greater and deeper cooperation regionally and globally, to counter, prevent and suppress all acts of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations,” Romulo said.

The Indonesian bombings come barely two weeks after three bomb attacks in Mindanao left at least eight dead and over 100 injured. One of the attacks was blamed on the Abu Sayyaf, while the other two were blamed on rogue members of the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

Authorities have said it is keen to find out whether the Abu Sayyaf and the JI had worked together in carrying out the Philippine and Jakarta bombings.

The Abu Sayyaf is blamed for the worst terrorist attacks in the Philippines and are alleged to be harboring JI militants blamed for the 2002 Bali bombings.

Meanwhile, Local Government Secretary Ronnie Puno said the PNP would install more than 200 close-circuit television cameras in Metro Manila shopping malls, movie theaters and transport terminals as part of the government’s heightened surveillance efforts to safeguard the public against terrorist bombings.

He said the PNP would also increase the number of checkpoints, deploy more K9 dogs and will intensify its intelligence gathering activities to prevent bombing incidents similar to what happened recently in two luxury hotels in Indonesia, which killed nine persons.

“We will be putting up within 24 hours from now, probably, CCTVs around what we call soft targets like: hotels, malls, theaters, and possibly, even terminals,” Puno told reporters on Saturday at the weekly Kapihan sa Sulo forum.

The said CCTVs can also be used to monitor the movements of protesters expected to flock the main thoroughfares of Metro Manila to halt, or at the very least minimize any untoward incident.

Puno, who has been tasked by the President to coordinate the anti-terrorism efforts of the police and the Department of the Interior and Local Government, said he met on Friday with the command group of the PNP to map out these new security measures.