"Officers from the Metropolitan Police Service Anti-terrorist Branch were this evening (Wednesday) granted warrants of further detention for nine people arrested during the anti-terrorist operation that took place overnight on August 9-10, 2006," a police statement read.

Under British anti-terror laws, police can detain terrorism suspects for up to 28 days without charging them with an offence, subject to regular court approval. Previous legislation only allowed police to hold terror suspects for 14 days without charge.

A total of 25 people have been arrested since police carried out pre-dawn raids in London and around Britain on August 10 in connection with an alleged terror plot to blow up US-bound passenger jets flying from London's Heathrow airport.

Eleven have since been charged, and Wednesday's news brought the total number of suspects released without charge to five.

"In all operations some people may be released without charge while others may remain in custody for further investigation," a police spokesman said.

"This is not unusual and is to be expected in large and complex criminal enquiries where a number of arrests have taken place."

Police have executed 70 total searches since the investigation began, a spokeswoman for London's Metropolitan Police told AFP on Thursday.

The 11 accused -- including a young mother and a minor -- appeared in a magistrates court in London 12 days after police raids in and around the British capital.

Eight facing the most serious charges of conspiracy to murder and preparing acts of terrorism were told to return to court on September 4 to appear before judge Anne Rafferty at the Old Bailey criminal court in central London -- the traditional venue for Britain's biggest criminal trials.

The three others are to return to the magistrates' court next Tuesday.

Of the three, two were charged with withholding information about an impending terrorist attack.

The third, a 17-year-old youth who cannot be named because he is a minor, was accused of possessing a book about bomb-making, suicide notes and wills, and a map of
Afghanistan with information "likely to be useful" to someone planning an attack.

The eight facing the most serious charges were men mainly from east London: Hussain, 25; Umar Islam, 28; Arafat Waheed Khan, 25; Ahmed Abdullah Ali, 25; Ibrahim Savant, 25; Waheed Zaman, 22; Assaid Ali Sarwar, 26; and Adam Khatib, 19.

They were followed by Cossar Ali, 23, the only woman accused and the mother of an eight-month-old son, and Mehran Hussain, 23.

"The investigation is far from complete. The scale is immense. Enquiries will span the globe," said Peter Clarke, chief anti-terrorist officer at London's Metropolitan Police, on Monday as the charges were announced.

Seven other people, including two Britons, are being held in Pakistan, where the authorities have suggested a possible link with Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network, which carried out the September 11 attacks in the United States.

Security at major airports was dramatically increased in the days after the August 10 raids, with a ban imposed on hand baggage and on carry-on beverages. The plot allegedly involved liquid explosives disguised as innocent-looking drinks being smuggled onto US airliners at British airports.

"It was tense," Nelson said, but he said the marshals never flashed weapons. He praised the marshals and flight crew for doing "an outstanding job."

Nelson said it remained unclear whether the flight crew was responding to a serious terrorist incident or "it was just a misunderstanding, where you had unsophisticated people flying."

U.S. government officials, who requested anonymity, said crew members and air marshals observed the passengers in the rear of the wide-bodied DC-10 trying to use cell phones and passing them around during and shortly after takeoff from Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. Cell phone use is barred on both U.S. and international flights. Some of the passengers also were trying to change seats, they said.

The Dutch Defense Ministry said that while the plane was over German airspace just after takeoff, the pilot radioed for permission to return to Schiphol and asked for an escort of jet fighters, the Associated Press reported. It said two F-16s scrambled from a northern military airfield, and routine security measures were swiftly put in place.

Nelson and a fellow flight-school program manager have been hailed as heroes for their phone calls that led to Moussaoui's Aug. 16, 2001, arrest and brought the FBI tantalizingly close to uncovering the Sept. 11 terror plot.

Moussaoui pleaded guilty to six conspiracy counts in 2005 and, after a jury narrowly spared him the death penalty last spring, is serving a life sentence without the possibility of release from a "supermax" prison in Colorado.

Dutch police spokesman Rob Staenacker told the AP that he couldn't disclose the nationalities of those arrested Wednesday or the nature of the suspicions against them. Nelson said he watched Dutch police come aboard in threes and escort a dozen men, 10 of them appearing to be of Pakistani or Middle Eastern descent, from the plane one by one in a remote parking area at the airport.

"Some they handcuffed before they took them out," he said. "One guy was a white guy, with a tie-dyed shirt, a beard and dreadlocks. He looked like a hippie. There was an older man who appeared to be of Indian descent."

A few of the others had beards, and some were dressed in shalwar kameez - traditional long shirts and baggy pants, Nelson said.

The incident was the latest of several terror alerts and flight diversions in the two weeks since British police shut down an alleged Islamic plot to smuggle liquid explosives aboard aircraft and detonate them, possibly with cell phones.

Nelson said he was with a flight crew for a Northwest subsidiary, Classic Aviation, en route to Bombay, India, to ferry a plane with a mechanical problem back to an Amsterdam repair facility.

About 15 minutes into the flight, he said, members of the cabin crew hurried past him and stood in the front of the cabin, pointing to the rear.

Nelson said the lead flight attendant then made an announcement over the plane's broadcast system advising everyone to remain in his or her seats.

"They needed to get a head count. People were moving around in the back, and they needed to get back in their proper seats," Nelson said.

Then the flight attendant made a second announcement, saying that something was going on and that air marshals were aboard.

Nelson said several marshals stood near him at the front of the cabin, but he couldn't see what was going on behind him. Nelson said he and his fellow crewmembers advised flight attendants that they were available to help if needed, but that was unnecessary because everyone remained calm.

On Aug. 14, Fox correspondent Steve Centanni and cameraman Olaf Wiig were snatched by unknown gunmen near the Palestinian security services headquarter in Gaza City when a truck intercepted them and forced them out of their vehicle.

The Fox TV team's Palestinian driver and two other journalists were set free.

"We can confirm that two of our colleagues at Fox News have been kidnapped in the Gaza Strip," Fox said in a statement in the wake of the abduction, adding that negotiations were ongoing for their release.

The pair were marched off the jet at gunpoint after fellow passengers alerted officials on the flight back from Malaga, Spain.

Holidaymakers on board flight ZB 613 from Malaga to Manchester became alarmed at the men's behaviour, and demanded that air staff remove them from the plane in the incident last week.

Cabin crew informed Spanish authorities of the passengers' fears and the men were taken off the Monarch Airlines flight and quizzed by police. The plane had been due to take off at around 3am last Wednesday but was delayed by around three hours.

Some passengers reportedly stormed off the Airbus 320 aircraft and refused to fly unless the pair were removed.

The pair were quizzed by officers for several hours, but then put up in a hotel and allowed to fly back to the UK later that day.

Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., locked in a tight Philadelphia-area re-election race, went a step further. "We either fight them there, or we fight them in the supermarkets and streets here,'' he said Wednesday in an interview with CNN.

Bush is not on the ballot this midterm election year. But control of the GOP-led Congress is. So the elections could determine the fate of what's left of Bush's second-term agenda.

The fight-them-there theme has been part of Bush's national security stump speech since 2003. But the "follow us here'' part is a relatively new twist.

Noting polls that show growing Iraq war opposition, Bush and other Republicans have been stressing links between Iraq and the broader war against terrorism - a connection Democrats generally dismiss.

They've also been trumpeting their record of urging aggressive action against terrorists.

"What you're seeing here is a restatement of what the administration, and I think most Republicans, consider to be a truth, which is that Iraq is right now the principal battleground in the war on terror,'' said GOP consultant Rich Galen.

The foiling by British authorities of an alleged terrorist plot to blow up U.S.-bound planes gave new impetus to the terrorism issue for Republicans - even as it underscored that potential terror strikes against the United States could come from anywhere.

An AP-Ipsos poll released Wednesday found that 60 percent of Americans believe that in the long run there will be more terrorism in the United States because of the war in Iraq.

That's up substantially from an AP-Ipsos poll taken in December 2003, after the capture of Saddam Hussein, when the figure was 40 percent.

In the new poll, 40 percent of Republicans said they believe there will be more terrorism in the U.S. because of the war. That compares with 74 percent of Democrats. The poll of 1,001 adults, taken Aug. 7-9, had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Also, a CBS-New York Times poll on Wednesday said just 44 percent of Americans now consider the Iraq conflict part of the broader war on terror - as the administration contends - down 10 points from June. More than half now say it is not.

"That's exactly why the president is refocusing on this, to remind people that that's an incorrect assessment. They are tied together,'' said Galen.

Stephen Cimbala, a professor at Penn State University who studies the interaction between war and U.S. politics, said Bush and Republican leaders clearly have decided that emphasizing their leadership in fighting terrorism is the best way to maintain congressional GOP majorities.

"And the more issues they can commingle with the war on terror, the better for them,'' Cimbala said.

Republicans hope that by cranking up their rhetoric on fighting terrorism they can offset the growing opposition to the Iraq war and blunt Democratic calls for troop withdrawals.

"That's their strategy and message: We're going to make you safer at home if we fight the terrorists there,'' said James Thurber, a political scientist at American University. "The language may have changed, but the theme has not.''

Is Bush right? Will staying in Iraq keep the U.S. from having to fight terrorists at home?

"It's partly true and partly not true,'' said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East Program with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

He said al-Qaida and other terror groups who once found refuge in lawless places like Afghanistan would probably fill any vacuum in Iraq created by departing U.S. troops, setting up training camps and lines of communication.

"But what is also true is that sometimes in fighting a war on terror, you create the conditions under which more people decide to be terrorists,'' Alterman said. "there's a lot on both sides of the ledger. Part of it depends on how Iraq turns out and part of it depends on the conduct of U.S. policy.''

More and more Republicans, even war supporters like Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., are voicing unhappiness with the administration's efforts to sell the war to Americans.

McCain, a potential 2008 presidential candidate, said Tuesday the administration had misled Americans into believing the conflict would be "some kind of day at the beach.'' McCain was in Ohio campaigning for Republican Sen. Mike DeWine, who is in a tough re-election fight in which the war is a key issue.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino on Wednesday disputed McCain's characterization, saying the president "has been consistent in saying how tough and difficult it's going to be'' to stabilize Iraq.

"But he also said it would be a mistake if we left, and that the terrorists would follow us here,'' Perino said, reprising Bush's line.

The first suspect, a 21-year-old Lebanese student identified only as Youssef Mohammed E.H., was seized early Saturday thanks to a tip-off from Lebanese military intelligence.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier welcomed the "international cooperation" that led to the arrest of the pair.

Youssef Mohammed E.H. was arrested at the main train station in the northern German city of Kiel, where he had been studying.

He was carrying a packed bag and was apparently in the process of fleeing the country.

Authorities last Friday said they believed Germany narrowly escaped a terrorist attack when the two bombs planted on trains heading for the western cities of Hamm, near Dortmund, and Koblenz, failed to detonate.

The devices were packed into trolley suitcases that were put on the trains when they stopped in Cologne, where security cameras captured images of the alleged bombers.

According to media reports, the first suspect called his family in Lebanon in a panic after seeing the grainy images on German television, allowing Lebanese spies to pick up the call.

Youssef Mohammed E.H. appeared before an investigating judge on Sunday and was told he would face charges of attempted murder, belonging to a terrorist organisation and attempting to cause an explosion.

According to the prosecutor's office, both suspects fled to Lebanon after the failed bomb attacks.

The first returned to Germany, while it is not clear if Jihad Hamad, who lived in Cologne, had come back to the country in the meantime.

The German government said the plotters intended to kill several people in a copy of the fatal train bombings in Madrid and London and had almost certainly acted with the help of a terrorist group.

The plot has put the country on edge, reminding Germans that three of the hijackers in the September 11 attacks, including ringleader Mohammed Atta, lived as students in Hamburg for years without arousing suspicion.

Germany has been trying to clamp down on extremists in the wake of the 2001 attacks, notably implementing a law that makes belonging to a foreign terrorist group a crime with a maximum jail sentence of 10 years.

Media reports have said Youssef Mohammed E.H.'s brother was killed in the Israeli offensive on Lebanon and the bombing plot may have been motivated by anger at the siege.

"He had relatives in Lebanon. His brother was killed there in an Israeli air raid a month ago. Youssef couldn't bear it. Maybe he wanted to take his revenge" on the West, an unnamed acquaintance told Bild newspaper.

But prosecutors have declined to comment about a potential link with the war in Lebanon.

Neighbours have described Youssef as a likeable man and a deeply religious Sunni Muslim who prayed five times a day in a basement room of the dormitory where he lived.

He was attending a preparatory programme for foreign students. Classmates have alternately described him as "friendly" and "radical".

The head of the Federal Crime Office, Joerg Ziercke, has told reporters that the police had garnered "a wealth of information" from Youssef Mohammed E.H. about his accomplice.

When officers asked him to identify it, Amin said it was a bomb, said Cook County Assistant State's Attorney Lorraine Scaduto.

He later told officials he'd lied about the item because his mother was nearby and he didn't want her to hear that it was part of a penis pump, Scaduto said.

He's been charged with felony disorderly conduct, said Andrew Conklin, a spokesman with the Cook County state's attorney's office.

Amin faces up to three years in prison if convicted.