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| Southeast Asia |
| 2 homemade bombs, grenade explode in southern Philippines |
| 2006-08-10 |
| MANILA, Philippines - Two homemade bombs and a grenade exploded in separate attacks on Thursday in the southern Philippines, killing a policeman and wounding five others, including a police ordnance expert, police said. An unidentified man riding on a motorcycle lobbed a grenade at the guardhouse of a government compound in southern Cotabato city, killing a policeman and seriously wounding three others, police said. A police investigation was underway to identify the attackers. The ARMM governs an autonomous, predominantly Muslim, region consisting of five impoverished provinces and a city. Almost simultaneously, two bombs went off in Kidapawan city in North Cotabato province, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Cotabato city, wounding passers-by and a police ordnance expert, police said. There was no evidence linking the grenade attack to the bombs, according to police. A small bomb went off on a roadside near a hotel in Kidapawan, but caused no injuries or damage, security officials said. Another bomb, made of a mortar shell, was discovered shortly afterward by passers-by near a busy road in Kidapawan, prompting the deployment of a police ordnance team, police said. As they were preparing to approach the bomb, it exploded, injuring one policeman and a civilian, provincial police chief Federico Dulay said. Army troops and police had cleared the area of people before the explosion, preventing a possible larger number of casualties, Dulay said. No one claimed responsibility for the Kidapawan blasts. Dulay speculated that terror groups may have been involved because the attackers placed the explosives in usually crowded areas and the bombs appeared to be different from those used by extortion gangs. “They were aimed at bringing about a deterioration in the security,” Dulay told The Associated Press by telephone. Dulay placed Kidapawan’s 70-member police force on high alert and ordered road checkpoints and intensified street patrols. Col. Ruperto Pabustan, commander of the 602nd Infantry Brigade in North Cotabato, said he suspected involvement by two al-Qaeda-linked groups _ the Abu Sayyaf, a small but violent Filipino extremist group, and the Indonesian-based Jemaah Islamiyah _ based on the explosives’ design and their location in busy areas. Troops and marines are waging offensives against the Abu Sayyaf and suspected Indonesian militants on nearby Jolo island. Communist and Muslim guerrillas have a presence in Kidapawan, about 920 kilometers (570 miles) south of Manila. The city has had several bomb attacks in recent years. |
| Posted by:Steve |