Government agents have raided an internet child porn operation based in a Philippine school and arrested its president and eight other people, investigators say.
The suspects used a room at the Mountaintop Christian Academy to post online images and video of children and adults for foreign consumption, said Ronald Aguto, cybercrime investigation head at the National Bureau of Investigation.
He said it didn't appear children at the school were being abused and the operators were uploading prerecorded images and video.
The school had 2000 primary and high school students, Aguto said. Its licence was revoked in 2006 for unknown reasons but it had remained open.
Puring Martinez, the arrested president and owner of the private school, told GMA television network she rented out the room to the internet site operators to augment the income of the school because fees paid by students were not enough to cover costs.
She said she was aware the internet links that were sold could be opened only by foreigners, and that the links led to "naughty" materials.
Martinez' son, Tom, said the school had only 260 preschool, primary and high school pupils, and their permit to operate was valid. It was not clear why there was a discrepancy with the NBI information.
He said the internet operation was owned by an American from Tennessee, who rented two rooms for 40,000 pesos ($A1000) in a bungalow separate from the classrooms but within the school compound.
All the suspects arrested are Filipino, and the American's whereabouts were not clear.
The raid shows the extent of the task facing Philippine authorities in cracking down on child pornographers, who exploit weak law enforcement and increasing broadband internet access to base operations in the country.
Gilbert Sosa, the director of the national police's Anti-Cybercrime Group, said in January the Philippines was one of the top 10 sources of child pornography in the world, and police have been co-operating with other countries to crack down on it.
In January, Britain's National Crime Agency said child abuse investigators in Britain, the US and Australia had dismantled an organised crime group that streamed footage of child sexual abuse.
The ring abused impoverished children as young as six, the agency said.
