Two homemade bombs exploded almost simultaneously on Sunday in two budget hotels in a southern Philippine city, wounding at least four persons, officials said. The first bomb exploded in a guestroom in the Iligan Travelers Inn near a shopping mall in the southern Iligan city, wounding at least three people. A second bomb went off within minutes in a room in the Caprice Lodging House, injuring one, according to army and police officials.
Bomb experts checked all hotels and lodging houses in Iligan to make sure they were safe, Brig Gen Hilario Atendido said. No one has claimed responsibility for the blasts, the latest to hit the country's south in recent days amid renewed hostilities between government troops and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, an 11,000-strong militant group that has waged a decades-long battle for Muslim self-rule in the southern Mindanao region. Officials in Iligan, a predominantly Christian city of 300,000 people, have strongly opposed a preliminary accord between the government and the militants that calls for the expansion of an existing Muslim autonomous region to include more than 700 new villages, including eight in Iligan, subject to the approval of residents in a plebiscite. |