Hunt spreads across the globe

By EUGENE BINGHAM and AGENCIES

A worldwide manhunt for suspects in this week's terrorist attacks spread to the Philippines late yesterday following arrests in the United States and Germany.

US and Philippine authorities raided a hotel in Manila, although they would not elaborate on what they had found.

President Gloria Arroyo said the "joint action" was taken at the Bayview Hotel, which is near the US Embassy in Manila.

Earlier yesterday, two suspects were taken into custody in the German city of Hamburg, and there were eight arrests at New York airports.

In another development that buoyed investigators late yesterday, the FBI confirmed that they had found black boxes from two of the hijacked planes.

Four planes were seized by terrorists late on Tuesday and deliberately crashed, killing thousands of people.

Authorities have confirmed that up to 50 people were directly involved in the attacks, though their associates numbered many more.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell confirmed yesterday that prime among those associates was Saudi exile Osama bin Laden.

FBI director Robert Mueller said 18 hijackers appeared to be on the four planes - five on each of the two planes which slammed into the World Trade Center in New York, and four each on the planes that crashed into the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania.

As more than 4000 FBI special agents fanned out around the world, investigators recovered a flight recorder from the Pennsylvania scene and said they had picked up signals from the pile of rubble at the Pentagon.

The recorders could contain information about the last minutes of the flights.

"We're hoping [they] will have some information pertinent to what happened on the plane," said FBI special agent Bill Crowley.

"This development is going to help a lot."

German authorities said three of the terrorists were part of a group of Islamic extremists in Hamburg.

Two, Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi, were registered students of a Hamburg university but had more recently been learning to fly in Florida.

Germany's Federal Prosecution Office also said they had detained a male airport worker and questioned a woman in connection with the attacks.

The pair were picked up in searches of four apartments.

Another man was still being sought.

In Mexico, investigators were looking for at least nine people suspected of being involved in planning the strikes.

Back in the United States, eight people were arrested at John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports, including four who had fled the airport on Tuesday after being challenged over their identity documents.

Attorney General John Ashcroft said the FBI's phone tip-line had received more than 2000 calls since Tuesday, while the website had been inundated with more than 22,000 possible leads.

Mr Ashcroft said the knife-wielding hijackers had at least one skilled pilot who had been trained in the US on each of the four doomed flights.

All the hijackers had tickets as passengers.

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