More terrorism suspects charged in Australia

Three Australians were charged on Wednesday with terrorism offences, bringing to four the number of suspects charged in a suspected plot to bomb an army base in Sydney.

The trio were picked up on Tuesday when police in Melbourne carried out a raid on a suspected Islamic terrorist cell they had been watching for seven months.

Five men are in custody, and police said the Australian citizens of either Somali or Lebanese descent had sought the blessing of a Muslim leader in Somalia for their plan to burst into the base and open fire with guns.

"It will be alleged that they had access to domestic-type weapons," counterterrorism police spokesman Peter Dein said. "There was no evidence that we had at this stage they had access to automatic weapons, but it will be alleged they were certainly planning to get access somehow."

Dein said the suicide attack on Sydney's Holsworthy Barracks would have taken place within weeks.

The men arrested have links to the Somali-based terrorist group al-Shabaab, which the government indicated would now be added to a list of banned groups that includes Al Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist organisations.

"This has been the subject of some internal deliberations within the government," Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said.

The prime minister also ordered a review of security at military bases. At Holsworthy, as elsewhere, the gates are manned by unarmed security guards provided by private firms.

Nayef al-Sayed, 25, the first of the five men in custody to appear in court to be formally charged with committing an act in preparation for a terrorist act, refused to stand in the courtroom during Tuesday's appearance, saying his religious beliefs prevented him from doing so.