Dubai has widened its search for the killers of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh on Wednesday with officials confirming at least six of the Hamas commander's assassins remain unaccounted for. Yesterday, police in Dubai issued international arrest warrants for eleven suspects in the case. It is now believed the team behind the murder numbered at least seventeen.

Police in the United Arab Emirates described the killing as meticulously planned, with the hit squad arriving on different flights and checking into different hotels. Dhafi Khalfan, Dubai's police chief, has said that he has not ruled out ‘the involvement of Mossad [Israel's intelligence agency] or other parties in the assassination.’

CCTV footage released yesterday indicates that the eleven suspects closely followed al-Mabhouh's movements shortly before his death last month. Forensic tests suggest al-Mabhouh was suffocated in his hotel room near Dubai International airport. The murder was carried out in just ten minutes, after which the suspected assassins fled the scene of the crime. The hit squad are thought to have spent less than nineteen hours in Dubai.

Gordon Brown has called for a 'full investigation' into how fraudulent British passports were obtained by the suspects. Six Israel-based British citizens whose names appeared on the British passports used by the assassins have denied all knowledge and involvement. The forged passports have fueled already widespread speculation in the region that Mossad was behind the assassination. If confirmed, the allegations will trigger an Israeli diplomatic row with Britain and the three other European countries whose passports were used - Ireland, Germany and France.

Al-Mabhouh was one of the founders of the military wing of Hamas and was wanted by Israel for his role in the kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers in 1989. Israel considered al-Mabhouh to be a key figure in the smuggling of weaponry from Iran to Hamas in the Gaza Strip. In an interview with Al Jazeera ten months before his death, al-Mabhouh revealed that Israel had tried to assassinate him three times.

Hamas has already accused Israel of orchestrating the murder. On Wednesday, Israel's foreign minister Avigdor Lieverman said the use of identities of foreign-born Israelis by the assassins did not prove that Mossad assassinated al-Mabhouh, though he refused to deny Israeli involvement.

The openSecurity verdict: The use of disguises, fictitious names, arrival by the suspects from different directions and their subsequent dispersal certainly bear the trademarks of a professional intelligence organisation. Mossad, which in Hebrew stands for the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations, has a history of involvement in scandals borne out of overseas espionage and covert operations.

The use of fraudulent foreign passports by the spy agency has in the past provoked diplomatic rows with a number of friendly countries. Analysts are suggesting that the use of British-Israeli identities could suggest that Mossad wanted to let the world know that it organised the murder, without making a public declaration, thereby sending a clear warning to Israel's enemies abroad. The cooperation of other countries cannot be ruled out at this stage. A further possibility is that another country masterminded the episode to make it seem as if Mossad was involved.

Al-Mabhouh’s murder certainly bears many hallmarks of a classic Israeli spy operation. The agency's modus operandi has in the past included overseas sting operations such as the plot to seize Mordechai Vanunu, the man who revealed Israel's nuclear secrets to the British press. Already, some former Mossad operatives have said the meticulous planning and speedy execution of the operation suggests that Mossad was involved. In 1997 for instance, the agency bungled an attempt to assassinate Khalid Meshaal, then head of Hamas’s political bureau in Amman, Jordan. That attempt saw Mossad agents pose as Canadian tourists and squirt a deadly toxin in Meshaal's ear. The plan however went awry and the agents, using fraudulent Canadan passports, eventually ran for safety to the local Israeli embassy. At the time, the operation had calamitous consequences for Israeli-Jordanian relations, and contravened an existing understanding between the two neighbours.

Gordon Thomas, who wrote a book on the Israeli intelligence agency, says the recent Dubai assassination bears resemblance to previous Mossad assassinations of Imad Mugniyah, the head of Hezbollah’s armed wing, in Damascus and Fathi Shkaki in Malta. Althought the Israelis have remained tight-lipped about the accusations leveled against them, there is certainly a history of the use of fraudulent identities, particularly the use of British passports, to carry out foreign operations. If the findings of an investigation now underway by the Serious Organised Cime Agency (SOCA), headed by the ex-Director-General of MI5 from 1996 to 2002, suggest the involvement of Mossad, there are likely to be consequences for British-Israeli diplomatic relations. A similar incident involving forged British passports used by Mossad in 1987 prompted British diplomatic outrage at the time.

With increased airport security across the world, there are likely to be questions about how the assassins managed to get in and out of Dubai on forged documents, which made use of existing passports issued by the British authorities. The questions of how the passports were acquired and how alternative photos were inserted into genuine passports without arousing suspicion loom large and have implications for people trafficking and international terrorism aside from espionage. Political parties in Britain have backed a full investigation, with Sir Menzies Campbell, the former Liberal Democrat leader, calling on the government to summon Israel's ambassador to the UK.

Within Israel there is mounting speculation about Mossad involvement, with some calling on Mossad's director, Meir Dagan, to resign his post for 'belligerent, heavy-handed' tactics. If Mossad complicity is uncovered, Israel's obligation towards its own citizens will be called in to question, particularly as the identities of foreign-born Israelis were stolen for the assassination. Others within Israel have welcomed al-Mabhouh’s demise and remain defiant. Israel's science and technology minister, Daniel Herschkowitz, was quoted in The Jerusalem Post as saying, 'my impression is that the Mossad knows how to get the job done, and it is a known thing that anyone who lifts a hand against a Jew is putting his life on the line.' Currently, the UAE is holding two Palestinians accused of participating in al-Mabhouh's assassination. The complicity of Palestinians will likely stoke tensions in the Gaza Strip where executions of collaborators and informants are common-place.

Israeli involvement in al-Mabhouh’s death will have massive repercussions for peace efforts in the middle east more generally. Increasing mistrust between Israel and its Arab neighbours is likely to stall the Obama administration's middle east policy, which may hinge on a general peace in which the Arab states still officially in a state of war with Israel would sign peace treaties recognising Israel in return for guarentees on Palestinian statehood. For now at least, peace in the middle east appears as elusive as ever, given the furore expressed by Hamas over al-Mabhouh’s death.

Russia and Abkhazia sign deal to build joint military base

Abkhazia, the Georgian breakaway region, signed a deal on Wednesday with Russia paving the way for the construction of a Russian military base on its soil. The move will increase Abkhazia's dependence on Moscow and stoke tensions with Tbilisi. Officials have said the new base would accommodate up to 3,000 soldiers, including units from Russia's FSB security services. The deal was signed during Kremlin talks between President Dmitry Medvedev and his Abkhazian counterpart, Sergei Bagapsh, who arrived in Moscow on Tuesday on the first visit since his reelection as president of the tiny de facto state on the Black Sea. Medvedev and Bagapsh are also set to discuss further economic cooperation as well as cultural and humanitarian relations.

The European Union and NATO have repeatedly expressed concern that a Moscow-led military build-up in Abkhazia threatens Georgia's territorial integrity. Georgia has already decried the new plans for a land base as illegal.

Cluster munitions treaty to enter force this year

An international treaty banning cluster munitions will come into force in August this year after the number of countries to register their ratification reached thirty, according to the United Nations. The convention bans the production and use of cluster munitions and obliges states to compensate victims. Campaigners against their use say they have killed and maimed thousands of civilians, though countries that make use of them say they are a legitimate anti-personnel weapon. The treaty under review is only binding on countries that have signed and ratified it.

Since the convention was opened for signature in Oslo in 2008, 104 countries have signed but only 30 have ratified, according to the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC), which represents 200 groups of activists against cluster bombs. Some of the biggest stockpilers - including the US, Russia, China and Israel - are not among the signatories. Rights groups and the UN have welcomed the ratification as a 'major advance on the global disarmament agenda.'

US reinstates ties with Syria

A top US diplomat has met Syria's President Bashar Assad, as part of a US move to improve ties with Damascus. William Burns, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, is the highest ranking US official to visit Syria since January 2005. The visit forms part of the Obama administration's attempts to improve ties with Damascus after years of tense relations. Analysts say the visit is aimed at loosening Syria's ties with Iran while pushing for a middle east peace accord.

Yesterday, it was revealed that President Barack Obama will nominate a career diplomat to become the US's first ambassador to Damascus since 2005. The White House said it would send Robert Ford to the Senate for confirmation hearings. The restoration of diplomatic relations with Syria is part of a broader initiative by Washington to engage with the Arab and Muslim world in the aftermath of Obama's trip to Cairo, where he committed himself to changing the US's image in the middle east.

US drone attack kills three in Pakistan

A US drone aircraft fired a missile at targets in Pakistan's North Waziristan region on Wednesday, killing three suspected militants. The drone targeted a compound in the village of Tapi, 15km east of Miranshah, the main town in the region. It is the second attack on the village this week. There is no information yet on the identity of those killed. Today’s drone attack is, according to Reuters, the 14th such strike in Pakistan this year compared with 51 last year and 32 in 2008.

Meanwhile, the Pakistani military has confirmed that the Afghan Taliban's top military commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, has been captured. Reports emerging yesterday suggested that the commander had been arrested in a joint US-Pakistani raid on 8 February in Karachi. Mullah Baradar is the most senior Taliban leader captured to date, and his arrest marks not only a propaganda coup for NATO forces but also suggests a turning point in co-operation between the NATO allies and Pakistan.

More journalists killed in 2009 than ever before

Seventy journalists were killed in 2009 making it the most dangerous year for journalists since record keeping began thirty years ago, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). At least thirty of the reported deaths came in a single politically motivated massacre in the Philippines last November, where journalists were accompanying female relatives of a local clan member filing candidacy papers to run for governor on the southern island of Mindanao.

The CPJ's annual Attacks on the Press survey, released Tuesday in New York, reports that some 150 journalists are currently in jail, including 60 in Iran where the CPJ says the authorities have in effect criminalised journalism. The group said online journalists were particularly vulnerable to repression and made up more than half of the news workers in prison worldwide. The report expressed concern about China’s incarceration of journalists and its large and overt internet censorship apparatus, contributing to what it calls a ‘grim picture’ in 2010.

Not far from the crowded beaches of Phuket, you can still find deserted lagoons and islands – as long as you don't mind kayaking to them

Lying back in the kayak, I tried to follow my guide's instructions to make myself as horizontal as possible while he propelled our two-man boat into the mouth of the sea cave and through a narrow tunnel.

"OK, now turn on your torch," Olay said. "Look, bats!" Just a couple of feet above my face, dozens of small, greyish bundles hung like macabre Christmas decorations. I shrank down further, willing them to stay put and trying not to swallow the repulsive stench of bat guano that grew stronger the further in we floated. At last we came swerving out into a perfect, circular lagoon of blue-green water, surrounded on all sides by high cliffs, vines and vegetation clinging to the vertical habitat.

"There are only two ways into the lagoons," Olay had said as our group's motorised escort boat set off into Phang Nga bay from Phuket's Ao Por Pier, "by boat or by helicopter, and I'm afraid we don't have a helicopter."

But there can be no better way to explore the emerald bay on the western Andaman coast of Thailand than by kayak. Over 160 limestone islands litter its breadth, characterised by sheer cliffs rising straight from the sea and, in some cases, hongs (hidden lagoons) at their centres, scenery brought to our attention by the blockbuster film The Beach in 2000. The area has been dramatically influenced by tourism since then. As part of the backpacking generation who flocked to Thailand a decade ago, I remember being totally alone on the famous jungle-backed beach where the film was set.

Sadly now, Olay reported, hundreds of tourists visit the beach daily, and the bay's most famous "paradise" spots – Phuket in the west, Krabi on the mainland in the east, and Phi Phi island further south – have come to symbolise the ruinous capacities of tourism, with big hotels jostling for space, and refuse, sewage and pollution problems. Yet, particularly if you travel by kayak, it is still possible to find an unspoilt side to Phang Nga. Californian John Gray was the first to bring commercial sea-kayaking to the bay back in 1989, importing a business he'd established in Hawaii (and has since rolled out to Vietnam, Fiji and the Philippines), and discovering lagoons, caves and tunnels unknown even to locals. Many other operators now run kayak tours of Phang Nga, but as the original, and an active environmentalist, John has earned local respect. Accompanying me and 20 other tourists on his signature "hong by starlight" excursion, he admitted feeling guilty about how busy the bay had become, and explained he is trying to get the industry to "green up" by educating guides and encouraging them to collect floating rubbish. "Be careful – what you're standing on there is the mangrove's lungs," he said, pointing at the little nubs of root sticking up from the mud, as we squelched over one island's interior. "I've seen photos of people doing pull-ups on the branches. Please don't touch."

The excursion's selling point is that each customer has their own guide to paddle their sit-on-top kayak and point out wildlife – monkeys, birds and lizards – as you explore several stunning lagoons. As dusk fell we ate a delicious buffet of curries on the deck of the big boat that ferried us between kayak spots, and made kratongs, floating offerings of flowers and candles that we released to bob about a starlit lagoon. Romantic, but a tad schmaltzy, plus being paddled by the guide felt cossetting. Ideally one would explore the bay independently, but local operators won't rent kayaks to inexperienced tourists without a guide (due to dangerous currents and complicated tides), so I had booked an extended camping and kayaking "mini expedition". While the rest of the punters headed back towards the dazzle of Phuket, our small breakaway party – with leader Olay, Welsh guide Martin and assistant Pung – paddled out into the darkness.

We set up camp on a tiny stretch of beach backed by towering cliffs on Koh Penak, and parked our kayaks in front of our tents. Blinded by each other's headtorches, we drank beers around the fire, listening to Martin's tales of expat life, such as the time he discovered a curled-up cobra in his bed and hired a snake-charmer to move it.

Phosphorescence glittering in the warm sea drew us in for a late-night swim, and we floated on our backs looking up at the stars, flipping over to create our own underwater constellations, and filling bottles to make "sparkling water".

Unzipping the tent at dawn and walking straight out on to the sand to watch a violet-rose-red sunrise is a luxury Phuket's most expensive resorts could never match. Between looming hulks of limestone across the bay, long-tail boats cast the day's first nets while around me the island woke up. Insects buzzed in the greenery, freshly filled rock pools fizzed, and before the tents had started emitting yawns and mosquito-aimed slapping noises, I had already watched a trio of hornbills flee squawking from the trees, and a metre-long black monitor lizard slither into the sea from the rocks. At breakfast – fresh pancakes and scrambled eggs – Olay described how he'd had to rescue the kayaks from the high tide in the middle of the night that attempted to snatch them from our sandy doorstep.

Eventually we set off, each paddling our own kayak, following the tide east into the bay. We made stops to examine quivering red anemones, explore Hong island, a glittering "diamond cave" and watch monkeys, before striking out into open water to paddle from island to island, Olay adjusting our route to circumvent the currents. In the main channel, pleasure boats chugged past, blasting their horns, loaded with tourists bound for Koh Ping Kan – "James Bond island", the setting for Scaramanga's lair in The Man with the Golden Gun. Inevitably, we stopped there, too, walking along a path to see the famous limestone stack just a few metres out in the water, where dozens of tourists – Japanese, French, German, Aussie – posed, fingers pointing like guns. How those people were missing out. With so many islands, it isn't hard to find deserted places to swim and if not by kayak you can reach them by chartering a long-tail boat. We saw many tiny beaches where the company sometimes camps, though Olay insisted others were forbidden to all but licensed birds' nest collectors, who sell the valuable ingredients for soup, and are allowed to shoot anyone who encroaches on their territory.

Riding the tide back to camp, exhausted after seven hours' kayaking, we returned to a delicious meal cooked by chef Toy on a makeshift kitchen set on some stones, of spicy tom kha gai coconut soup, curry, noodles and sweet and sour jackfish, freshly picked cockles and chillies (I chose to ignore what John Gray had said about raw sewage being pumped into the bay).

Phang Nga is so vast, it would take weeks to paddle across; to be sure we saw the highlights, a long-tail boat whisked us around the next day. At "Tarzan beach" we swung on vines from rocks into the sea, saw huge shoals of anchovies and several cigar fish, drifted silently listening to monkey calls, and explored Hlam Tang, the largest hong yet, negotiating a thick maze of mangroves to a huge, other-worldly cavern full of dripping stalactites. Later, squatting among lifejackets and paddles below deck, Toy cooked green curry – the best I had in Thailand – which we ate on the swaying roof of the boat, learning some Thai: "Pet pet pet!" ("Very spicy!").Snorkelling later to a long sandy spit that protruded from the beach on Koh Pak Beer, I floated above massive sea urchins, brain coral, giant clams and parrotfish, and almost stepped on a stingray in the shallows.

Koh Yao Noi, the bay's second largest island next to its neighbour, Koh Yao Yoi, was my drop-off point. With its tiny villages, beach huts, massage stalls and rubber farms, it looked charmingly traditional and unspoilt, despite the smattering of top‑range hotels. But as the long-tail pulled up at the immaculate lawns of the Koyao Island Resort, I knew the luxurious sea-view accommodation would never match the magic of a plastic tent on a deserted strip of sand.

Getting there

Eva Air flies from Heathrow to Phuket from £520 rtn inc tax.
Kayak trips John Gray Sea Canoe three-day camping trip, £350-£500pp depending on group size, inc meals and Hong by Starlight trip (otherwise £75pp). Experience South East Asia (020-7924 7133) packages to Phuket and Koyao Island Resort from £539pp per week.

Originally published on 15 December 1989

MANILA

Unidentified men fired rifle grenades at a US embassy compound yesterday, triggering fears that military mutineers are targeting Americans in their efforts to destabilise the government of President Corazon Aquino.

Though no one was hurt and the damage was minimal, the attack heightens the tension in the city that is still reeling from a week-long military rebellion that came very close to succeeding.

Earlier, the Philippines Senate passed a bill that allows President Aquino to exercise emergency powers until June, 1990. Mrs Aquino declared a state of national emergency last week, primarily to deal with the economic dislocations caused by the attempted coup.

About three hours after the grenade attack, an explosion at the home of a US embassy official in suburban Manila seriously injured a carpenter working on the roof. An embassy spokesman said the explosion may have been caused by ordnance left by army rebels who held Makati, Manila's affluent financial and residential district, under siege for five days last week.

The rebels have accused the US Government of interfering in affairs when it sent jets to provide air cover for troops attacking rebel strong-points at the height of the fighting. The mutineers also warned that Americans might be targets for rebel attack.

On Wednesday, the Defence Secretary, Mr Fidel Ramos, said that, though the rebellion had been contained, the remnants "still maintain military capability to wage terrorism and sabotage".

No one has yet claimed responsibility for yesterday's grenade attack. "We will be interested to see if anyone owns up to this cowardly attack," said the US ambassador, Mr Nicholas Platt, adding that the "terrorists" were unmindful of the threats to women and children in the compound. President Aquino later telephoned Mr Platt to express her concern about the attack.

Police said five men had stolen a van at gunpoint and used it to fire rifle grenades which hit the compound's post office, grazed the clinic and shattered the windows of cars. Three hours after the attack, shells fired from an M-203 rifle exploded on the roof of the home of a US agricultural officer, Mr Lyle Moe. The attack came just as the Philippines Senate ended debate on what additional powers President Aquino can exercise for the duration of the state of emergency.

On Wednesday the Philippines House of Representatives passed a bill that allows Mrs Aquino emergency powers for three months.