MANILA: Unidentified assailants armed with automatic weapons and a bomb attacked the convoy of a governor from a troubled island in the southern Philippines yesterday but he escaped unhurt, police and local officials said.

Five of Gov. Abdusakur Tan’s security officers were wounded in the bomb blast in the attack on Jolo island, regional police chief Bensali Jabarani said.

Tan has ordered a crackdown on Abu Sayyaf militants who use the island as a base and who are holding an Italian Red Cross officer captive for four months.

“The attackers were targeting the governor,” Jabarani said.

The attack came about a week after the province’s police chief and four of his men were killed in an ambush on another part of the island.

Tan said it was premature to speculate about who was behind the attack but believed he was the target.

“It was intended for me,” Tan said, adding he was in his car when the explosion happened about 70 meters (200 feet) away. “I am okay. I am all right. Only my shoes were damaged.”

Tan’s spokesman, Fadzlur Raman Abdullah, said the crude bomb was rigged to a motorcycle parked on a road which the governor’s convoy usually takes when he goes home for lunch every day.

Abdullah told reporters the military and police were investigating the attack.

“But we all know that the governor has ordered a crackdown on the Abu Sayyaf on the island,” he said.

Abdullah said there was a heavy exchange of automatic gunfire after the blast.

Tan said the government, through a team of Islamic preachers, continued to talk to the kidnappers of Italian engineer Eugenio Vagni, hoping the rebels would free him soon.

Last month, Abu Sayyaf militants separately freed Swiss national Andreas Notter and Filipino engineer Mary Jean Lacaba, who were being held with Vagni.

All three Red Cross officials were abducted on Jan. 15 when they were on a visit to a prison on Jolo.

The Abu Sayyaf, a small but violent militant group based on Jolo and nearby Basilan, had earlier demanded troops relax the tight cordon they were keeping around the rebels’ hideout before talks for the hostage release could start.

The Abu Sayyaf, with links to Al-Qaeda and the Southeast Asian regional militant network Jemaah Islamiyah, is notorious for high-profile kidnappings. It has also been blamed for the bombing of a ferry in Manila Bay in 2004 that killed 100 people.

— With input from agencies