(MENAFN- Arab News) KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian police said they arrested 12 people plotting to sow civil unrest and seized explosives on Sunday just one day before the country hosts a Southeast Asian summit.
National police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said the 12 men with suspected links to the Islamic state group were arrested in a western suburb of the capital Kuala Lumpur.
He said the men all Malaysians aged from 17 to 41 were detained during an operation this weekend.
Police also seized Islamic State group flags and various items that could be used to make explosives including ammonium nitrate potassium nitrate kerosene and wires Khalid said in a statement.
'The plan by the cell members to launch attacks is in response to calls by IS leaders in Syria to attack secular Islamic countries deemed to be their enemies' he said.
Malaysia has now detained 104 suspected supporters of the Islamic State group in the past two years.
Kuala Lumpur is host of Monday's summit of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Malaysia plans to call at the gathering for regional anti-terror cooperation.
Malaysian police say dozens of its citizens have gone to Syria to join the brutal IS jihad and have warned of radicals returning to stage attacks on home soil.
In early April police said they arrested 17 IS-inspired militants who were plotting to kidnap unspecified high-profile figures rob banks and launch terror attacks.
A day later the government passed an anti-terrorism law that allows police to hold suspects virtually indefinitely without judicial review.
The law has drawn fire from the parliamentary opposition and human rights groups who say the long-ruling government has a history of using security laws against political opponents.
The government which is steadily losing ground in parliament has promised the law would not be abused for political ends.
But opposition lawmakers complain that authorities have shared no details with them on the dozens of claimed arrests or the extent of the purported terror threat.