MANILA, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Islamist militants loyal to the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) regional group continue to flee to the southern Philippines to hide, train in explosives and gain combat experience, a regional security analyst said on Tuesday.

A small group of Indonesians, led by two key suspects in the 2002 Bali bombings, also wants to set up a presence in southern Thailand, although this has not happened yet, said Sidney Jones of the security think-tank International Crisis Group (ICG).

"It was a push factor more than pull factor that brought them to Mindanao," Jones told foreign correspondents in Manila, adding the Indonesians, Malaysians and Singaporeans who had fled to the southern Philippines were escaping from authorities at home.

The new arrivals "were trying to get training and combat experience", she said, adding the 40-year-old separatist conflict in the southern Philippines could be a factor for the continuing presence of Islamist militants on the island of Mindanao.

"As long as there's an active war in the south, there will be a small percentage of jihadis there," Jones said.

Security officials in Manila and Jakarta believe there could be as many as 50 militants hiding in rebel areas in the southern Philippines, most of them Indonesians.

Jones said JI, which wants to establish an Islamic caliphate in Southeast Asia, had been weakened by arrests in Indonesia and the dismantling of its network in Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines, but its operatives at large remained very dangerous.

She said authorities had information that a group of around a dozen Islamists led by Bali bombing suspects Umar Patek and Dulmatin was trying to link up, and possibly move its operations, to southern Thailand, but has been initially rebuffed by local militants there.

"The Thais have people who were trained locally, speak their own dialect and shown a very clever ability to improve their own explosives training just through experience," Jones said.

"There has been a desire to shift from Mindanao to southern Thailand, but that has not happened." (Reporting by Manny Mogato; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Alex Richardson)

AlertNet news is provided by