Singapore warns of increasing extremist attack threat

Singaporean Law and Home Affairs Minister Kasiviswanathan Shanmugam (Photo: Reuters)

Singapore (VNA) – Singapore’s security authorities have warned that the threat of a terror attack is now higher than before as radical Islamists are becoming increasingly active in neighbouring Indonesia.

Speaking to the Foreign Correspondents Association in Singapore on December 2, Law and Home Affairs Minister Kasiviswanathan Shanmugam said that Singapore has received a great amount of information warning of the threat.

He added that the country will take the warnings from Indonesia seriously and keep in close touch with the neighbouring country.

However, he did not specify whether the threat has increased just in the city state or in Southeast Asian region in general.

The Minister’s comment was made as tens of thousands of Muslim carried out a protest in Jakarta against the city’s Christian governor for allegedly defaming the Koran.

Singapore has never witnessed any attack of Islamic militants, but the government has warned its citizens of the attack threat.

Previously, Singaporean authorities broke up a plot to bomb several embassies not long after the September 11, 2011 attacks on the United States.

A Singaporean was accused of plotting to crash a hijacked plane into the city’s airport in 2002.

Earlier this year, Indonesian police arrested six suspicious militants who were believed to be linked to the Islamic State (IS) group and were plotting an attack on Singapore.

According to statistics of the Singaporean Ministry of Law and Home Affairs, about 1,000 people have left the Southeast Asian region to war zones in Syria and Iraq to fight for the IS, most of whom being Malaysian and Indonesian and some 10 being Singaporean.-VNA