ZAMBOANGA CITY, 23 August 2007 — Police foiled a second bomb attack in the southern Philippines, which came just after an explosion injured 14 people in Zamboanga City on Tuesday night, officials said.
Superintendent Oscar Buenaobra, chief of police in Pagadian City, west of Zamboanga, said the bomb was discovered on a passenger bus and defused 15 minutes before it was timed to explode.
Buenaobra said police found the device after the bus passengers disembarked at a crowded terminal.
The bomb attacks came hours after President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo ordered tighter security as she warned of possible terror attacks elsewhere by militants to divert the military’s focus from the offensives on nearby Jolo and Basilan islands.
Blast investigators in Zamboanga said they found fragments of magnet and a clock used as timing device to trigger the explosion and traces of chemicals suspected to be ammonium nitrate.
Sr. Superintendent Manuel Barcena, Zamboanga City police chief, the bomb, staged amid already-tight security in the city, may have been set off by the Abu Sayyaf group. “We have at least three suspects. We already have a cartographic sketch of one suspect,” said Barcena.
NPA Attack
In another part Mindanao Island, New People’s Army rebels stormed yesterday a small town in the southern Philippines and seized weapons from a police station before raiding a private plantation and took more firearms, authorities said.
About two dozen rebels, disguised as army soldiers, entered the police base in San Isidro town in Davao Oriental province and pretended to surrender a captured NPA fighter.
But once inside the town hall, they disarmed all police officers and emptied the town’s armory of weapons, bullets and supplies,” Eleuterio Quilisadio, police chief in the southern province of Davao Oriental, told reporters.
“The rebels also raided a nearby mango plantation, taking two more guns from security guards, the officer said.
It was the second NPA raid in the area since April when guerrillas seized 114 weapons from a prison.
Since 1969, the 7,000-member NPA has been fighting a protracted guerrilla warfare in 69 of 81 provinces in the mainly Roman Catholic country.
The communist insurgency is one of the longest-running Maoist rebellions in Asia has killed more than 40,000 people.
