The suspects were arrested after "intelligence reports confirmed that terrorist groups sympathetic to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein were planning attacks against several American targets in the country in retaliation for the US-led war against Iraq," Immigration and Deportation Commissioner Andrea Domingo told reporters.

Among those arrested was Saad Khahamatar T'laa, a suspect in the 1991 attempted bombing of a US cultural center building in Manila's financial district in a Manila suburb, Domingo added.

T'laa was nabbed Wednesday in Davao city in the south where an explosion at an airport killed at least 21, hurting over 110 others.

Domingo said the authorities were investigating reports that the 11 Iraqis were part of a terror network allegedly led by an expelled Iraqi diplomat Husham Hussain linked to extremist groups in the southern Philippines.

The Philippine government accused Hussein of having alleged contacts with the Abu Sayyaf bandit group before he was expelled last month.

Philippine police chief Hermogenes Ebdane also asserted Thursday that the arrest of 11 Iraqis and other "Middle Eastern foreigners" is part of the government's campaign to prevent pro-Iraqi groups from attacking American interests in the country.

The Philippines is a key ally of the US and is part of the Washington-led "Coalition for the Immediate Disarmament of Iraq." The US had warned the Philippines that Iraqi militants in this country could launch attacks on US interests when Washington moved to oust Saddam.

Fears that Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" would end up with the Abu Sayyaf or the separatist rebels weighed heavily on the government decision to join the US-led "coalition of the willing," President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said Thursday.

The US will also ask the Philippines to break official ties with the Iraq by expelling its diplomats and closing its embassy here, Ron Post, Public Affairs Director of the US Embassy in Manila said on Thursday, adding that this was in line with the US State Department's plan to instruct all American embassies to ask their host nations to declare they no longer recognize the regime of Hussein.

(Xinhua News Agency March 21, 2003)