MANILA, Philippines -- An al-Qaeda operative sent to the country to carry out bomb attacks was captured middle of last month, sources in the Philippine National Police told the Philippine Daily Inquirer on Thursday.

Investigators were verifying if Khalil Hasan Al-Alih of Jordan was also involved in the purported plot to assassinate President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Al-Alih was picked up at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport on Feb. 15 after arriving from Saudi Arabia, the sources, who sought anonymity for lack of authority to speak, said.

One source, a ranking police officer, said Al-Alih was sent to the Philippines to bomb targets that included the American and British embassies. He reportedly used a Kuwaiti passport and had been coming in and out of the Philippines since the 1990s.

Lost in airport

The source said Al-Alih dropped a package that contained documents in Arabic that detailed the plot. The package was picked up by an airport security guard and turned over to police, he said.

The documents were reportedly shown to intelligence and security personnel from the US and other embassies “for assessment.”

PNP Director General Avelino Razon was to report Al-Alih’s capture at an international conference of the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) in Hong Kong Thursday.

Razon was to deliver a report on terror links between Central Asia and the Southeast Asia-Pacific region and the Philippines’ efforts to combat terrorism.

More embassy targets

The Associated Press, quoting Filipino officials, said local authorities had arrested three suspected Middle Eastern militants suspected of involvement in a plot to bomb the US and three other embassies in Manila.

“There is a high probability they are involved in some kind of plan to sow trouble,” Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita told reporters on the sidelines of an annual antiterrorism and business security conference in Makati City.

All were Middle Eastern nationals, Ermita added.

One of the militants was arrested in Metro Manila and the others were captured separately in the southern Philippines recently, he said.

Ermita refused to provide details, but two senior Filipino security officials told AP that investigators were verifying intelligence information the three may have been involved in a plot to bomb the US, British, Australian and Israeli embassies in Manila.

Authorities believed the three had links to the Indonesia-based regional terror group Jemaah Islamiyah and the Abu Sayyaf in the southern Philippines.

Funds released

Funding for the plot had been secured, indicating an attack against one of the embassies may be in an advanced stage, one of the officials said, adding that all the embassies concerned had been notified.

The two officials were concerned the threat would be dismissed by the political opposition as a government effort to justify a heavy military and police presence in the capital while President Arroyo grapples with the NBN-ZTE corruption scandal.

One of the officials said there was no indication the terror plot involved a direct threat against Ms Arroyo.

Ermita, in his speech at the Protect 2008 conference in Makati, said terrorists were planning to use the street demonstrations against President Arroyo to launch their attacks. He said the authorities took two suspects into custody before the Feb. 29 interfaith rally in Makati. With an The Associated Press report