Tuesday November 26 6:23 AM EST

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysian authorities said on Tuesday they had arrested four suspected members of a Muslim militant group including members of a suicide squad who had planned to bomb U.S. interests in Singapore.

The four suspected militants were arrested between November 16 and November 20 in the southern state of Johor. Three of them were Malaysian and one was Singaporean, a security official said.

"I believe these groups identify themselves as a suicide bombing (squad)...they call themselves as a suicide squad," police chief Norian Mai told a news conference.

In the last year, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore have arrested dozens of suspected members of the Jemaah Islamiah, a Southeast Asian group linked to the al Qaeda network.

There has been much speculation that the Jemaah Islamiah was behind the October 12 bombings on the Indonesian island of Bali that killed more than 180 people.

A security official said three of the men arrested were part of a suicide squad who were to have provided back up to a Jemaah Islamiah cell which was broken up last December after Singaporean police discovered plans to attack U.S. targets there.

They were believed to be part of a group directed by Hambali, a shadowy Indonesian preacher who has been identified by Malaysia and Singapore as a ringleader, and one of the group's main contacts with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

The official said the four men had fled Malaysia in January after their cell was broken, but had returned in the last couple of months.

A senior Malaysian security official described the men captured as foot soldiers, rather than leaders of Jemaah Islamiah.

"They are not big wheels, they are lower level," said the official, who declined to be identified.

The latest arrests take the number of suspected militants being held under a tough internal security law to 73.

Police say Jemaah Islamiah is intent on building a Muslim state spanning the southern Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and southern Thailand.

In October, Malaysian authorities said they had detained five suspected Muslim militants, including one linked to al Qaeda, the group Washington says carried out the September 11 attacks.

-- Anonymous, November 26, 2002