BALI: Eight people are the prime suspects in the Bali nightclub bombing which killed more than 180 people, including 33 Britons. The eight, which include seven Indonesians and one foreigner, are being "intensively questioned". None was identified.
As the investigation continued, the Australian Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, vowed to do everything possible to bring those responsible to justice. He was speaking at a memorial service in Bali for the dead, many of them young Australians.
His foreign minister, Mr Alexander Downing, had earlier urged Australians to leave Indonesia, saying officials had received "disturbing" new information about threats to Westerners in several South-east Asian countries.
Minutes before his warning, two bombs tore through the lunchtime crowds in Zamboanga, a city in the southern Philippines - one of the countries on the list. Six people were killed and 150 wounded.
The Filipino president, Ms Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, condemned it as a terrorist attack and police blamed Abu Sayyaf, a Muslim extremist group which had so far concentrated on kidnapping for ransoms.
Meanwhile, the Indonesian President, Mr Megawati Sukarnoputri, has won parliamentary backing for a tough new anti-terrorism decree. It gives more powers to the security forces and allows for the death penalty to be handed down in terrorist cases.
Elsewhere, police in Malaysia said they believed a Malaysian with bomb-making skills could have been involved in the Bali massacre.
Azahari Husin (45), a member of Jemaah Islamiyah - the militant group widely blamed for Saturday's attack - is thought to have fled to Indonesia from Malaysia when authorities there began arresting extremists after the September 11th attacks in America. An Indonesian cleric and one-time leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, Riduan Isamudin, also known as Hambali, may also have been involved in the attack, a Malaysian official said.
Hambali is accused of arranging a meeting between two of the September 11th hijackers and al-Qaeda operatives in Malaysia in January 2000.
The Jakarta Post, meanwhile, said Indonesian intelligence agents were focusing on a group of seven "foreigners" suspected of masterminding the bombings. It was not clear whether the seven were among the eight suspects held in custody. - (AP, PA)