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Biggest crackdown

on Manila

sex industry

MANILA: Philippine agents swooped on discos, sauna baths and public parks and seized 691 "entertainers" and street children in the biggest crackdown on prostitution in years, officials said on Monday.

"This is just the beginning. Expect more to come," National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Director Mariano Mison said after vice squads raided 23 suspected prostitution fronts in Manila and six satellite towns over the weekend.

The raids followed an order from President Fidel Ramos for an intensified campaign against the country's notorious sex industry in the wake of an increasing child abuse.

Officials said many of the suspected paedophiles were foreigners, including a Briton, an Australian and a Frenchman being investigated for alleged sexual abuse of children.

Mison said the seven-hour operation from Saturday night to Sunday morning - dubbed "Operation Angel" - yielded more arrests in a single night than during a comparable 1992 crackdown on Manila's Ermita red light district.

Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim padlocked 250 girlie bars in that operation which lasted weeks. About 145,000 people, including thousands of bar girls, lost their jobs in Lim's crackdown.-Reuter