ZAMBOANGA CITY, 16 October 2006 — At least three persons were injured by an explosion in Jolo yesterday, the fourth in a spate of bombings in the volatile southern Philippines, military and police officials said.
Reports reaching the military’s Western Mindanao Command headquarters here said the homemade explosive was left in a tricycle parked near the Peacekeeper Inn in Jolo Island, 150 kilometers southwest of Zamboanga City and 1,000 kilometers southwest of Manila.
Brig. Gen. Raymond Ferrer said the inn is located inside the police’s Camp Asturias at about 7 o’clock last night.
Radio reports identified the victims as Hattah Jilah, Lolita Bernardo, and Geraldine Bernardo.
Ferrer said the explosion was “powerful,” but he could not immediately give information on what caused the blast.
Earlier yesterday, troops defused a bomb which was found just three hours before it was timed to explode near the public market of Pagadian City, 180 kilometers northeast of Zamboanga City.
Chief Superintendent Jaime Caringal, the regional police chief, said a guard found the bomb in a backpack near the gate of the Agora market in downtown Pagadian.
Caringal said the bomb consisted of a was a rocket-propelled grenade and an M203 rifle grenade attached to an alarm clock and batteries.
Lt. Gen. Eugenio Cedo, the military’s Western Mindanao commander, said the device was timed to explode in the middle of the day when the public market would have been packed.
He added that the attempt could be part of a series of bomb attacks that killed six people and wounded more than 30 others last week in the southern region of Mindanao.
Investigators are looking for witnesses to determine who planted the bomb, which was found after dawn in the provincial capital of Zamboanga del Sur province, Caringal said.
Troops and policemen later set up checkpoints and intensified patrols in Pagadian. “We’re very closely guarding the piers, airports and all places where terrorist activities can happen,” Caringal told DZBB radio.
Authorities have placed Mindanao under “extreme critical alert” — the highest of a four-step public terror warning system — after three bombings last week, including one powerful blast that killed six people and wounded 29 others during a fiesta late Tuesday in Makilala town in North Cotabato province. The US, British and Australian embassies advised their citizens against traveling to Mindanao due to “credible information” that terrorists could strike.
Central Mindanao police chief German Doria said an investigation indicated the bomb attacks were plotted by Indonesian militants Dulmatin and Umar Patek.
The two, suspected of being key operatives in the regional militant group Jemaah Islamiyah, are among the prime suspects in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people — in Southeast Asia’s worst terrorist strike. They are believed to have fled to Mindanao in 2003.
Doria said he believes the two collaborated with Usman Basit, a Filipino militant, and six other local guerrillas in the violence last week.
Police are preparing criminal charges against Dulmatin, Patek, Basit and other militants in connection with the attacks, he said. (With input from agencies)
