ZAMBOANGA CITY, 22 August 2007 — At least 14 people were injured in a bomb explosion last night in the southern port city of Zamboanga, hours after President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo warned of diversionary attacks by Al-Qaeda-linked militants.
Police said the blast, which occurred at around 7:45 p.m., shook buildings and shattered glass windows of department stores around the city’s Plaza Pershing, where a bomb was planted under a concrete bench.
“It was an IED (improvised explosive device). We are still investigating,” Senior Superintendent Manuel Barcena, chief of the local police force, told reporters.
Barcena said among the injured were children.
Soldiers and police officers searched for more bombs in places near the blast site last night, but they found nothing.
Security was tight in city center as soldiers set up road blocks, inspecting all passing civilian vehicles for weapons and explosives. There were no reports of arrests.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack.
Earlier in the day in Manila, President Arroyo ordered the military and police to bolster security as she warned that Abu Sayyaf extremists might be planning to sow terror elsewhere in a bid to ease pressure from ongoing military offensives in the southern islands of Basilan and Jolo, both near Zamboanga City.
The government will not ease off the offensive despite calls from some various groups to halt the fighting because doing so would endanger the country’s security, fail to give justice to slain soldiers and embolden terrorists, Arroyo said in her opening statement at a meeting of the National Security Council.
Government troops have taken heavy casualties in the past two months in the southern Philippines, including 14 Marines who were slain in an ambush in a gunbattle in Basilan’s Al-Barka town on July 10, 26 army soldiers and Marines killed in separate clashes in Jolo early this month, and another 15 Marines and an air force pilot killed in fighting in Basilan last week.
Dozens more troops were reported injured in the clashes.
Troops bombarded Muslim rebel strongholds with artillery on Basilan on Sunday, a day after the clash where 15 Marines were killed.
The military claimed about 40 Abu Sayyaf insurgents were killed in the latest clash in Basilan’s remote Ungkaya Pukan town, including two commanders. Last week’s casualties were part of a task force organized to search for militants involved in the beheading of 10 of the 14 fallen Marines on July 10.
On nearby Jolo island, troops raided a suspected Abu Sayyaf safe house in Indanan township early Sunday and took into custody 19 men, women and children, army Maj. Gen. Ruben Rafael said. After questioning, 14 were released and investigators were trying to determine if the other five were Abu Sayyaf gunmen, he added.
Tens of thousands of villagers in Basilan and Jolo have fled their homes for fear of getting caught in the crossfire, local officials have said.
“With the victory of our troops and police against terrorists in Basilan and Sulu, it is not farfetched for them to attempt to sow terror in other parts of the country. That is why I have ordered our national police and armed forces to coordinate with local governments and the people to safeguard our cities and communities against any terrorist plot.
“We will not back off from our offensive in order to give justice to our marines, to give peace and progress to our country,” Arroyo said, urging Filipinos to unite behind security forces.
