NEW YORK, Aug 1: Police seized five bombs in a raid on a Brooklyn apartment on Thursday and later said one of three men arrested admitted that the explosives were to be used in terrorist attacks on New York's subway system.Two middle-eastern men -- Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, 23, and Lafi Khalil, 22 were shot and wounded in the apartment by police who feared the suspects were about to detonate the bombs.

They were hospitalized with wounds that were not considered life-threatening. In a complaint filed in Brooklyn federal court late Thursday, they were charged with conspiring to set off bombs in the subway and in unspecified buildings.

The FBI and the New York City Police department issued a statement late Thursday that said ``Abu Mezar and Khalil were planning to target US and Jewish interests worldwide.''

The third man was arrested uninjured. His name and alleged role in the conspiracy was not immediately released.

Police found a Jordanian passport, although they did not know if it was legitimate, and a complete application for political asylum in the US in a bag belonging to Abu Mezer, the court papers said.

Abu Mezer indicated in the application that he had been arrested in Israel for ``allegedly being a member of a known terrorist organization.''

After the raid at the tenement in the Park Slope neighborhood, Abu Mezer allegedly described how the bombs could be disarmed, and described to prosecutors at the hospital plans to target the subway system, the court papers said.

Investigators believe the men along with at least one other accomplice were planning a suicide bombing or bombings in the city, a federal law enforcement official in Washington said on condition of anonymity.

Police Commissioner Howard Safir said each of the five ``pipe-like devices was powerful enough to have killed someone, but he said it was not clear whether they were intended to be separate devices or one device.''

An investigator in New York who spoke on a condition of anonymity, however, said four of the devices were tied together, and it appeared as if the suspects were close to being ready to use them.

``It looks like it was completed or nearly complete,'' he said. ``You don't make those things and have them sit around.''

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani described the three men as coming from the Middle East but said he did not know their country of origin.

Neighbours said they were devout Muslims with extreme political views.Giuliani said he knew of no connection between the suspects and Wednesday's bombing in a Jerusalem market that killed 15, but that one of the men arrested had ``expressed support for what happened in Israel and was gratified that it had occurred.''

The arrests came four days before opening arguments in the trial of convicted terrorist Ramzi Yousef, charged in Manhattan federal court with masterminding the World Trade Center bombing.

But Giuliani cautioned against making generalisations based on ethnicity. ``This is not and should never be a question of group blame,'' he said.At least one of the men, and possibly two, arrived in the US within the past two weeks, according to an investigator who spoke on condition of anonymity.In Washington, White House spokesman Mike McCurry said: There does not appear to be any direct threat to the people of New York city or the United States.''

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.