RP mosques attacked after bombing in south

RP mosques attacked after bombing in south

Erik de Castro, Reuters, Davao, Philippines

Philippine gunmen threw grenades at three mosques in the southern city of Davao on Thursday as police scoured debris around a destroyed food stall for clues to a bombing that killed 16 people, officials said.

Police investigating the second deadly blast in Davao in a month said they believed an unidentified man left the bomb in a plastic bag at a barbecue stand just after dusk on Wednesday as crowds of people milled around a ferry terminal.

Two children, a nun, four policemen and several vendors were among the dead in the explosion that shredded bodies, shattered windows and blew a crater in the pavement.

The 53 wounded included a 12-day-old boy.

Government officials said it was too early to identify the culprits but a senior police officer said Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) hardliners were trying to derail peace talks between Manila and the country's largest Muslim rebel group.

Foreign Affairs Secretary Blas Ople said the attack would not shake the government's determination "to see the peace process through to its successful conclusion".

Security forces in the mainly Roman Catholic country are fighting the MILF and three other guerrilla groups seeking an Islamic homeland in the south.

They are also on high alert for reprisals over the U.S.-led war in Iraq because of Manila's close ties with Washington.

Underscoring the constant threat of violence, unidentified gunmen threw grenades and sprayed bullets at three mosques in Davao, about 900 km (560 miles) south of Manila, on Thursday.

Police said four visiting Muslim clerics were slightly wounded.

Davao had been largely spared three decades of Muslim separatist strife on Mindanao island before Wednesday's attack and a bombing at the airport that killed 22 people on March 4.

Officials said the two bombs appeared to be of different kinds.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said she had ordered security forces to "take all appropriate measures" to deal with "a state of lawless violence" in the area.

Senator Aquilino Pimentel, a lawyer from Mindanao, said he was concerned about potential civil rights abuses.

"This can be misinterpreted by the law enforcers as a 'go' signal for a crackdown on the population," he told Reuters.

But government officials noted that Arroyo's order was not tantamount to martial law -- a sensitive issue in the Philippines after the 21-year rule of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos -- and that the rights of residents would be respected.