MANILA, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- Philippine security forces arrested three suspected terrorists in Jolo, a town in Sulu province in the southern Philippines, including an Indonesian woman, in a predawn raid on Saturday.
Lieutenant Colonel Ronaldo Mateo, spokesperson for the military's joint task force Sulu, said the security team arrested an Indonesian woman and two other females at a safe house at around 1:50 a.m. local time in a village near Jolo town.
The second suspect is the wife of an Abu Sayyaf sub-leader and the third one is the wife of an Abu Sayyaf member.
Mateo said a lower court in Jolo issued the "search warrant" for a safe house believed to be owned by the sub-leader.
The security forces recovered a "suicide vest rigged with pipe bombs and other improvised explosive devices components" from the suspects who are now detained at a police jail in Sulu, he said.
Brigadier General William Gonzales, commander of the joint task force, said the arrest was the fruit of the pursuit operation the military launched after the Aug. 24 twin bombings this year that killed 15, including eight soldiers, and wounded 75.
The Indonesian woman was first on the security force's list since they received intelligence reports that she is going to conduct suicide bombing after the death of her husband, an Indonesian terrorist who was killed in an Aug. 29 clash with the military in Patikul town in Sulu, he said.
The military has blamed the Abu Sayyaf terrorists for the Aug. 24 bombings, as well as for the deadly January 2019 Jolo Cathedral bombings that killed 23 and injured 95.
The Abu Sayyaf group, a loose band of about 200 militants, has carried out deadly bombings and a series of kidnappings in the remote and poor southern Philippine provinces of Sulu and Basilan.
The group, which has been terrorizing the Philippine southern region since the 1990s, preys on foreign tourists, businessmen and fishermen not only from the Philippines but also from Indonesia and Malaysia. Enditem
