MANILA, Dec 6: The US embassy shut its doors to the public on Tuesday after a bomb threat, with Philippine police warning of potential suicide attacks by Jemaah Islamiah, a regional network of militants linked to Al Qaeda.

On its website — http://manila.usembassy.gov — the embassy said the temporary closure was due to ‘plausible threat information’, which it did not describe.

A police bomb squad with sniffer dogs searched the exterior of the heavily fortified compound, after not being allowed inside, but officers said nothing unusual had been found.

Inspector Oscar Enciso, head of the Manila bomb squad, said a US official asked for assistance on Monday evening after a mobile phone text message was received from someone named ‘Evita’ threatening to blow up the embassy.

“We thought we needed to take the necessary steps, which meant we had to close the public services,” Matthew Lussenhop, an embassy spokesman, told reporters without specifying the nature of the threat. “They’ll be closed again tomorrow.”

The Philippine government, fighting homegrown Muslim and communist insurgencies as well as Jemaah Islamiah, is a staunch American ally.

But anti-American sentiment in the Philippines, a former US colony, has risen in recent weeks with six visiting US soldiers being investigated over allegations they raped a Filipino woman on Nov. 1 after joint military exercises.

A Philippine intelligence official said two leading foreign militants hiding on the southern island of Mindanao wanted Indonesians to carry out attacks.

Citing information shared by Jakarta, the police official said Dulmatin and Umar Patek had asked a contact in central Java, Abdullah Sunata, to send Indonesian recruits to Mindanao to launch suicide bombings in the Philippines.

Dulmatin and Umar Patek, the main suspects in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed nearly 200 people, are high on a US terrorism blacklist. Washington has offered a reward of $10 million for the arrest of Dulmatin and $1 million for Umar Patek.

Sunata was arrested in June during a sweep in Indonesia—Reuters