MANAMA

Bahrain rejects all forms of terrorism and is ready to co-operate fully with the US and the international community to eliminate the phenomenon, said Transportation Minister and acting Interior Minister Shaikh Ali bin Khalifa Al Khalifa yesterday.

During telephone conversations with US Ambassador Johnny Young and other diplomats, Shaikh Ali stressed that international co-operation was the best means to combat terrorism.

He said that acts of terrorism violated all religious principles and moral and humane values.

Shaikh Ali condemned the attacks against US installations and described the targeting of innocent lives as disgraceful criminal acts.

He stressed that Bahrain would do all it could to help the international community uncover the identity of the terrorists responsible.

Shaikh Ali made his remarks as shock gave way to anger around the world in the wake of the carnage and an unprecendented coalition of Washington's overseas friends and rivals declared war on terrorism.

With hundreds of people confirmed dead and almost 5,000 missing, President George W Bush said the US and its allies were determined to "do generations a favour by coming together and whipping terrorism."

As the Pentagon requested $20 billion (BD7.56bn) in additional funding to fight terror, a bomb alert at Grand Central Station in Manhattan threw thousands of people in the streets and blocked traffic around the train terminal in New York.

Lifting the spirits of the exhausted rescue teams, five fire-fighters were pulled alive from the smouldering rubble of the World Trade Centre, according to CNN.

Another nearby structure, the 50-story Liberty Plaza, teetered dangerously and officials said it might also collapse, which would add greatly to the difficulty of the clean-up.

Bush, facing the biggest challenge of his eight-month presidency, spoke as the probe into the strikes against the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon gathered pace.

Secretary of State Colin Powell became the first senior US official to say for the record what many have been saying privately: that Osama bin Laden is suspected of engineering the attacks.

An Afghan Taliban radio station, monitored by the BBC, said the Taliban authorities had said they were ready to hand over bin Laden to an Islamic court if the US could prove his guilt in the terror attacks.

In Brussels, Nato and Russia issued a joint statement declaring that the perpetrators would not go unpunished.

EU's security ministers also plan to meet next Thursday its strategies.

Britain said its forces were on alert for possible retaliatory action.

China, albeit with reservations, also signalled support.

In Japan, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party tabled a parliamentary motion to enable the Japanese Self-Defence Forces to defend US bases - a task denied to them under current law.

And alongside moves to prepare the world's militaries, international intelligence and police services swung into action to trace the terror network believed to be behind the carnage.

Speaking on the telephone to New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Governor George Pataki, Bush said he would visit the stricken city today - a day he declared for "prayer and remembrance" - to comfort the families of victims.

Giuliani said 4,763 people were missing from the twin towers of the World Trade Centre. Both skyscrapers, where more than 40,000 people work, collapsed after being struck by hijacked airliners, burying a still unknown number of people.

The official death toll at the World Trade Centre rose to 94, and 70 body parts also had been recovered from the wreckage.

Among the missing were 300 fire-fighters and 60 police, and the city ordered 6,000 extra body bags.

The Pentagon said 126 people were still unaccounted for, not including the 64 people aboard the American Airlines plane that punched a gaping hole in the side of the Pentagon, setting off a huge explosion and fire.

Military sources said 60 bodies had already been found, but it was not clear how many of them had so far been identified and the actual death toll was still uncertain.

Giuliani said the New York figure was compiled from numbers provided by companies searching for their employees, reports from rescue workers and telephone callers.

It also included people who were on the two airliners that demolished the buildings - former symbols of the city's financial power.

The FBI committed about 4,000 special agents and 3,000 support personnel to the investigation and appeared to be making progress, both in the US and abroad.

German police said they had detained an airport worker "of Moroccan origin" in connection with the attacks. Police also said two other men believed to be connected with the attacks had lived in the city of Hamburg, including Mohamed Atta, 33, who was on the passenger list of one hijacked plane.

Authorities reopened US airspace, but Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta said airports would be reopened on a case-by-case basis, only after airlines implemented tighter security measures.

But authorities said the US was only accepting international flights by US carriers.

An Alitalia flight headed to New York from Rome was forced to turn back after an hour in the air because of the decision.

Officials said they had located the black box flight recorder from the hijacked flight thah crashed in rural Pennsylvania, which might provide valuable new evidence of the events aboard.

Attorney-General John Ashcroft said the four planes were taken over by a total of at least 18 hijackers who had "significant ground support." He also said pictures of the 18 would be released later in the day.

Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican and veteran of the Vietnam war, said the US had a message for those behind the attacks: "We are coming after you. God may have mercy on you, but we won't."

FBI Director Robert Mueller said investigators had identified many of the hijackers.

In the Philippines, police said it was co-operating with the FBI in its probe into a similar plot by Muslim radicals which he said was foiled in 1995.

French police were also in contact with their US colleagues over the case of a Frenchman of Algerian origin who was arrested before Tuesday's attacks carrying a false passport.

British police arrested a man at London's Heathrow airport but refused to say whether the arrest was linked to the US attacks.

In Rome, Italian police arrested two Bangladeshis, travelling on false documents, and seized a number of unused stolen passports after stepping up airport controls.