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.