Cotabato City, Philippines - An abandoned car rigged with about 200 kilos of improvised explosives was recovered by police and military operatives in the southern Philippines, an armed forces spokesman said Sunday.
Lieutenant Colonel Julieto Ando, a regional military spokesman, said the car bomb was recovered on Saturday parked at the side of a road in Datu Saudi Ampatuan town in Maguindanao province, 960 kilometres south of Manila.
The car bomb was found as the military braced for retaliatory attacks from the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf rebel group for the death of two top leaders - chieftain Khadafi Janjalani and main planner Abu Solaiman - in separate clashes with government troops.
Ando said residents in the area tipped off the police about the car, which was allegedly parked on the road since late Friday. 'The explosives were wired onto each other and it was fitted with alarm clock as a timing device,' he said. 'The car bomb was intended for a major attack.' Security forces also found in the car an 81-millimetre mortar shell, three 60-millimetre mortar shells and one live shell of shoulder-fired recoilless 90-millimetre anti-tank weapon.
Investigators were still determining the identities of the people who left the car in the area. On January 10, three explosions allegedly perpetrated by Islamic militants rocked three cities in the southern region of Mindanao - General Santos, Kidapawan and Cotabato - killing seven people and wounding more than 30 others.
Sun Country Airlines passengers who flew from the Twin Cities to New York on Saturday morning underwent special security screening after landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Crew members noticed "irregularities" with a security seal covering a smoke detector in one of the lavatories, said Sun Country CEO Shaun Nugent.
Smoke detectors on the airline's Boeing 737 airplanes have tape seals, so it can be readily detected when someone tries to remove a smoke detector cover.
Flight 245, which had 43 passengers and six crew members on board, landed in New York without incident, but the plane was routed to an undisclosed location at the airfield for security reasons, Nugent said.
Passengers were taken off the plane, screened and released. "One passenger was temporarily detained by local authorities and the FBI and then released," Nugent said.
After airport and federal authorities searched the aircraft, it was released back to Sun Country.
The Mendota Heights-based carrier flies to New York and other major U.S. destinations. Those flights originate from the Humphrey terminal at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.