Kuala Lumpur: Malaysia said on Tuesday it needed
to boost security surveillance in Borneo after gunmen
travelling by boat abducted two men near a town cited in a US
travel warning.
Police in Sabah state on Borneo said yesterday that
Malaysia's maritime border with the Philippines had been
sealed off to prevent the gunmen escaping after they snatched
the two men from a seaweed farm near the town of Semporna.
The United States issued an advisory last month warning
that criminal and terrorist groups were planning attacks
against foreigners in isolated areas of eastern Sabah
including Semporna and the diving spots of Sipadan and Mabul.
Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman said the abduction
was not a terrorist act and that the Philippines-based Abu
Sayyaf, which carried out a tourist kidnapping in 2000, was
not responsible.
"It is not the Abu Sayyaf group. It is a normal robbery,"
he said to a news agency, but said that Malaysia had to be more vigilant and intensify surveillance in the region.
"It is a wake-up call. We need to have more boats that
can be deployed in shallow waters and security personnel armed
with night vision goggles," he said.
Sabah police chief Noor Rashid Ibrahim said that the two
men were seized in the early hours of yesterday by five men --
including Malaysians and foreigners -- armed with two rifles.
PTI
First Published: Tuesday, February 09, 2010, 17:33