ZAMBOANGA CITY, 17 November 2004 — Five of seven suspects in a bomb attack that killed at least 14 people in the southern Philippine city of General Santos have been arrested with explosives in their possession, military and police officials said yesterday.

Military spokesman Lt. Col. Buenaventura Pascual said two women and three men were cornered on Wednesday in General Santos, where Sunday’s bombing also wounded 70 people.

Police charged the five, along with two others, with illegal possession of explosives in connection with the bomb attack.

Senior Superintendent Leopoldo Bataoil identified four of the suspects as Norma Factora, Sali Miguel Tasil alias Salili, Karias Lik Kamad alias Elias Kamad, and Roland Samuel alias Allan.

The other respondents in the case, filed at the General Santos Metropolitan Trial Court, were Asing Arola, Connie Baltazar Formentera, Omar Hassan, and several still unidentified persons, Bataoil told reporters, quoting a report from Superintendent Willie Dangane, General Santos City police chief.

Authorities recovered from them a mortar, a blasting cap, a hand grenade, electrical wire, C-4 plastic explosives and a pack of an unknown white powder, the officials said.

Col. Alfredo Cayton, the area's army brigade commander, said one of the suspects was identified by a witness as a bomber.

He refused to elaborate, and it wasn’t immediately clear if the suspects belong to any terrorist organization. He said authorities have “a solid lead” and that divulging details “might compromise our ongoing operation.”

“We are following all leads including the business rivalry (angle),” Cayton said. “Although we have the suspects, we are interrogating them to determine the actual motive.”

The investigation in General Santos, about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) south of Manila, is also being helped by Australian police, said senior police inspector Maximo Sebastian.

General Santos City Mayor Pedro Acharon said he believed the blast stemmed from a feud between Christian and Muslim merchants for control of the market. Some security analysts support the theory of business rivalry.

National police chief Edgar Aglipay said investigators were looking into the feud angle, but they are not ruling out the involvement of militant groups.

A police report said high explosives, possibly TNT, were used in the attack.

“The bomb was assembled by professionals,” said a member of a police investigating team, who declined to be identified.

A police report obtained by Reuters said investigators had recovered fragments of the explosive device, including a deformed 9-volt dry cell, iron casing, wires and pieces of hard plastic.

Traces of TNT and PETN explosives were also found at the scene, said the police investigator.

“PETN is used as a base in blasting caps and detonators, a key ingredient in the bomb,” he said, adding that similar material had been found at the scene of a train attack in Manila four years ago that killed 22 people.

Similar material was seized in 2002 from a warehouse in General Santos City rented by Fathur Rohman Al-Ghozi, an Indonesian militant. The material was due to be shipped to Singapore via Kalimantan when it was discovered, he said.

Al-Ghozi, a senior member of the Jemaah Islamiah militant group, was gunned down in a police checkpoint in Mindanao in October 2003, about three months after he had escaped from detention.

The Abu Sayyaf is a militant group that has been linked to Al-Qaeda and blamed for a deadly ferry bombing in February .

Antonio Billiones, the region’s police chief, said there had been intelligence reports since September of a plot by Abu Sayyaf to bomb the southern city. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo promised a swift investigation into the bombing, which shattered a months-long lull in bomb attacks in the country’s volatile south. (Additional input from agencies)