The mother-in-law of top terror suspect Hambali today said she was shocked when she saw a television report that he and her daughter had been arrested in Thailand.

Salmah Abdullah, 67, the mother of Hambali's wife Noralwizah, said she was desperate to see her daugher, who is now in detention in Malaysia.

"It was a shock to me," she told a reporter who visited her in her dilapidated house in Keramat Dua village near Beluran in Sabah. "I am now worried sick about her safety."