Update | Philippines thwarts attack on Chinese embassy, arresting three plotters
Trio found with crude bombs at Manila airport planned to fire on mission in protest against 'soft stance' towards Beijing, investigators say
The Philippines said yesterday it might file terrorism charges against three anti-China activists who planned to set off small bombs and strafe the Chinese embassy with gunfire to protest at the government's supposedly soft stance towards Beijing.
The group was led by a man named Grandeur Guerrero, who told arresting officers he was a "general" of USAFFE - the United States Armed Forces in the Far East, a second world war military formation in the Philippines.
Tipped off by an informant, agents of the National Bureau of Investigation - the investigating arm of the Department of Justice - arrested the trio on Monday morning as they were about to plant a petrol bomb in a toilet in the car park of Terminal 3 at Ninoy Aquino International Airport. The men allegedly planned to place three other bombs in the toilets of the nearby Mall of Asia.
According to the NBI's Anti-Organised Transnational Crime Division the men had four improvised devices, each consisting of a powerful firecracker taped to a plastic bottle of gasoline and improvised time fuse.
After setting off the bombs the three planned to drive past the embassy of China and shoot at the building. They planned a similar strafing run at the offices of the DMCI construction firm, a company with close links to China. NBI agents found the trio also had a pistol.
The men - aged 43, 22 and 25 - worked as security guards for a textile company just outside Manila, according to investigators, though one news report said the three were army reservists.
