Australia: Muslim Bombers Busted in Plot to Attack Australian Army Base

Another day, another jihad.

Men arrested in Melbourne over army base suicide attack plot hat tip Lucy

A PLOT by Islamic extremists in Melbourne to launch a suicide attack on an Australian Army base has been uncovered by national security agencies.

The Australian newspaper reports federal and state police, armed with search warrants, swooped on members of the suspected terror cell early this morning in several suburbs across Melbourne.

The exact number of arrests was unclear, although it has been reported that 19 search warrants were executed.  The group was believed to have about 18 members, with a smaller hardcore centre.

The investigation of the group, dubbed Operation Neath, involved about 150 members of the Australian Federal Police, Victoria Police and ASIO. It was launched in late January.

The men, Australian nationals of Somali and Lebanese background, are expected to be charged with a range of terrorism-related offences.  Most of those arrested are labourers employed in Melbourne's construction industry, or taxi drivers.

Authorities believe the group was at an advanced stage of preparing to storm an Australian Army base using automatic weapons, as punishment for Australia's military involvement in Muslim countries. It is understood the men planned to kill as many soldiers as possible before they were themselves killed.

Members of the group have been observed carrying out surveillance of Holsworthy Barracks in western Sydney and other suspicious activity around Defence bases in Victoria.

Electronic surveillance on the suspects is believed to have picked up discussions about ways to obtain weapons to carry out what would be the worst terror attack on Australian soil.

The alleged cell was inspired by the Somalia-based terrorist movement al-Shabaab, with two Melbourne men, both Somalis, having travelled to Somalia in recent months to obtain training with the extremist organisation, which is aligned with al-Qaeda.

One of those men had already returned to Melbourne. The other was still in Somalia.

Ellison's district?  The State Department is importing whole Muslim communities from Somalia and resettling them in small towns in the US.

Al-Shabaab, which is using suicide bombers and jihadist fighters to try to overthrow the Somali government, seeks to impose a hardline form of Islam, and sees the West as its enemy. It has been declared a terrorist organisation by the US and it has close links with al-Qaeda leaders, including Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, an architect of the 1998 attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in which 223 people died.