Authorities says Islamic terrorists targeted school

SINGAPORE -- Authorities foiled an attack in Singapore's American School when they arrested 31 suspected Islamic militants, the government said Thursday in a report on terrorism.

Singapore's government said the Southeast Asian Islamic group Jemaah Islamiyah planned the attack for late 2001.

The group is linked to al-Qaida and has been implicated in the Oct. 12 bombings on Indonesia's Bali island that killed almost 200 people, mostly Australians.

The government has previously accused Jemaah Islamiyah of planning truck bomb attacks on the U.S., Australian and British embassies and other targets in the city-state, but this is the first time it has accused it of targeting the American School.

The report said local Jemaah Islamiyah leaders instructed members to conduct reconnaissance of the school, which has close to 3,000 students, mostly children of American expatriates.

"They were told to mark observation posts, monitor movement of U.S. security personnel and take photographs and photocopy maps," the report said.

About 17,000 Americans live in Singapore, a wealthy city-state of 4 million people. Almost 6,000 international companies, many of them American, have offices in the country.

Singapore announced in December 2001 and September 2002 that it had arrested 31 people and foiled a plot to level the embassies. Most of those arrested have admitted being members of Jemaah Islamiyah, the report said.

"It is clear that all of them were involved in an elaborate conspiracy, initiated and aided by foreign terrorist groups," the report said, quoting a government-picked advisory board that evaluated the cases against the suspects.

More than half of the detainees had taken an oath to Jemaah Islamiyah and believed they would face divine retribution if they broke it, the board said.

The government warned in the report that hundreds of other terrorists are still at large in Southeast Asia and could strike at any time in retaliation for the arrests.

But it said Singapore is close to crushing local Jemaah Islamiyah cells, and will begin investigating a Philippine Islamic rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. It said the MILF is active in Singapore and has close links to Jemaah Islamiyah.