A chilling warning on a day of tears: 70,000 terrorists are at large

1.00pm - By RAYMOND WHITAKER

More than 70,000 trained terrorists remain at large around the world, a leading expert has warned, as ceremonies were held to commemorate the third anniversary of the September 11 outrage.

The continuing threat of terrorism was reinforced by two blasts yesterday near Western-linked banks in the Saudi port of Jeddah, injuring at least one person.

The US consulate in the city was closed as a precaution following the spate of attacks on Western targets in Saudi Arabia over recent months in which 90 people have been killed.

In Indonesia the authorities released security camera footage of a suicide bombing in the capital, Jakarta, which killed nine people and wounded more than 180 outside the Australian embassy on Thursday. The attack has been claimed by Jemaah Islamiah, a group linked to al Qaeda.

In Australia, the country's top policeman said on Saturday the militants had a second group poised for attack.

"There is intelligence suggesting that there is a second group active in the area," Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

President George Bush marked the 11 September attacks by warning of continued danger to the US and pledging victory over international terror.

"We will not relent until the terrorists who plot murder against our people are found and dealt with," he said in a rare live radio address from the Oval Office, surrounded by relatives of victims of the World Trade Centre and Pentagon attacks.

After attending a prayer service yesterday morning, Mr Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and their wives took part in a silent commemoration at the White House.

The Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was at the Pentagon, where 184 people died, and John Kerry, Mr Bush's Democratic opponent in the November election, attended a service in Boston. The largest ceremony was at Ground Zero in New York.

Since Mr Bush declared a "war on terror" in the wake of September 11, some 3,500 members of al Qaeda and affiliated groups have been killed or captured, including several leading figures in the network founded by Osama bin Laden.

But Bin Laden, his second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Mullah Omar, the Taleban leader who gave them a base in Afghanistan, have not been captured.

Daniel Benjamin, former counter-terrorism adviser to Bill Clinton, warned that 70,000 terrorists trained at Afghan camps remain at large.

Now a senior fellow at the Centre for International and Strategic Studies in Washington, Mr Benjamin recently criticised the Iraq war as "a mistake" which had pushed many moderate Muslims towards terrorism.

The Bush administration, he said, had failed to understand that the war against terrorism was an ideological campaign, and that targeting states or individuals was not the answer.

- INDEPENDENT