Australia launches anti-terrorism media campaign

CANBERRA: Australia’s government launched an anti-terrorism media campaign on Thursday that calls on the public to report suspicious activity to prevent a London-style suicide bomb attack. The advertisements in newspapers, trains, ferries and on television began as Australian Prime Minister John Howard said Australia could suffer an attack just like London, where suicide bombings last week killed at least 52 people. “Assumption that this country is immune from that kind of happening is foolish, it is complacent,” Howard told reporters. “The stark and arresting thing about what happened in Britain is that there was no intelligence. The people apparently responsible were ‘cleanskins’. The suicide bombers - nobody suspected them.” British police have said four British-born suicide bombers were responsible for the blasts last Thursday on three underground trains and a double-decker bus. Attorney General Philip Ruddock said Australia’s national security campaign, which first ran in 2003 and briefly again last year, would initially last three weeks and would urge people to report possible signs of terrorism to a hotline. reuters

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