December 15, 2012, GMA News, Police: Suspected Malaysian Jemaah Islamiyah member killed in Davao City,

December 15, 2012, GMA News, Police: Suspected Malaysian Jemaah Islamiyah member killed in Davao City,

(UPDATED 5:00 p.m.) - A Malaysian national with suspected ties to the terrorist network Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) was gunned down after an encounter with police in Davao City on Friday night and after threatening to blow up an explosive device.

The police are verifying reports that the Malaysian - identified as Mohammad Noor Fikrie Bin Abud Kahar - is a suicide bomber of the JI, according to a report on Radyo Mo Nationwide on Saturday.

The RMN report said the Davao City police also arrested Kahar's Filipina wife Annabel Nieva Lee, who was with the Malaysian Friday night.

Davao City Police Office head Senior Superintendent Ronald dela Rosa said his men cornered Kahar and his wife at a hotel in the city at about 10:00 p.m.

About to check out when cornered, the couple tried to run toward the nearby People’s Park where people were converging at a midnight sale.

Kahar allegedly threatened to detonate a bomb with a mobile phone, the RMN report said.

The police eventually cornered him in front of a restaurant where he was shot dead, he added.

The RMN report said police had kept the couple under surveillance due to intelligence reports that they allegedly have ties with the JI.

Meanwhile, an Agence France-Presse story quoted de la Rosa as saying the suspect was killed after threatening to blow up an explosive device in a rucksack.

"'If you arrest or shoot me I have a bomb. I will explode it,'" de la Rosa quoted the suspect as telling police at the lobby of a hotel during a three-and-a-half-hour stand-off.

The authorities had raided the hotel after a tip-off that one of its guests was planning a "terror" attack in the city of 1.4 million people, de la Rosa said, without elaborating on the source of the information.

He said the Malaysian was a suspected member of JI, an Islamic militant group blamed for attacks in Southeast Asia including the Bali bombing in Indonesia in 2002 that claimed 202 lives.

"Take-down orders were given to SWAT snipers but (it) could not be implemented since the area was overcrowded," de la Rosa told reporters by telephone.

While in the hotel lobby the suspect brandished a mobile phone, which, he said was the trigger for the explosives contained in the backpack that was being carried by his Filipina wife, De la Rosa said.

The man later took the rucksack from the woman and ran out of the hotel and into a nearby park, where he was shot and killed by police snipers, the police official added.

De la Rosa said police arrested Lee and disarmed an "improvised explosive device" that included a mortar shell retrieved from the backpack.

Authorities are investigating the woman's possible involvement with JI, de la Rosa said, adding police believe she had converted to Islam when she married the Malaysian. - with reports from Agence France Presse, Gian C. Geronimo, VVP, GMA News