Three killed and dozens hurt in Philippine blasts
Three killed and dozens hurt in Philippine blasts
DAVAO, Philippines (Agencies): Three people were killed and dozens wounded when unidentified attackers bombed a town fiesta and a commercial center in the southern Philippines, police said on Tuesday.
They have not established the motives behind the Monday night attacks but said there were no signs that Moro rebels fighting for an Islamic state in the south of the mainly Catholic country were involved.
On Tuesday, a bomb blast outside the Jakarta home of the Philippines' ambassador to Indonesia killed two people and wounded dozens, including the envoy.
Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid said the explosion may be linked to violence in the southern Philippines, but the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the larger of two guerrilla groups there, denied responsibility.
Eid Kabalu, a MILF spokesman, told Reuters the rebels were only targeting the Philippine army and its allies.
In the fiesta bombing, three people died and 36 were injured in the blast in the middle of a crowd in Monkayo town, Compostela Valley province, 950 kilometers south of Manila.
Police said two of the victims were killed on the spot while one died later in hospital.
An hour before the Monkayo attack, a businessman was injured when a grenade exploded at a commercial section in Jolo town in the Sulu islands, 240 kms southwest of Monkayo, police said.
They said they saw no connection between the two blasts. The attackers escaped.
The Jolo blast occurred about 15 kms from a mountainous jungle lair where the fundamentalist Abu Sayyaf rebels are holding at least 29 foreign and Filipino hostages.
The Monkayo explosion occurred on the main southern island of Mindanao where government forces are fighting the MILF.
The Monkayo town plaza was packed with people attending a carnival organized to celebrate the town's annual religious festival when an explosion ripped through the crowd.
"There was a sudden explosion," one of the survivors said. "I thought it was an explosion from a fluorescent lamp. I did not know it came from a bomb."
"It seems the bomb was planted. We are trying to establish the motive and the identity of the perpetrators," police spokesman Capt. Matthew Baccay said.
"We don't think this is part of a jihad," Baccay said, referring to a recent call by the MILF for Muslims in the country to take part in a holy war against Manila and its armed forces.
The military said the MILF's 15,000 fighters had broken up into small bands to launch guerrilla attacks after government forces last month captured the rebels' main base on Mindanao.
Separately, military spokesman in Zamboanga said on Tuesday that seven government militiamen were killed in an attack by separatist guerrillas in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao.
MILF fighters attacked a militia detachment in Esperanza town on Monday, killing seven militiamen, the spokesmen said.
Meanwhile, police in Labangan town defused a bomb planted by suspected MILF guerrillas on an electrical pylon on Saturday, they said.
Clashes with MILF guerrillas have increased recently after the government overran the Muslim rebels' main Mindanao base last month, prompting MILF chairman Hashim Salamat to flee abroad and call for a "jihad" or holy war against the government.
MILF fighters have since carried out armed raids and bombings which have claimed at least 43 lives and left scores wounded in the past two weeks.