19 killed in Davao blasts

A deadly bomb explosion ripped through a crowd outside Davao City’s international airport late yesterday afternoon, killing at least 19 people including an American and wounding 114 others.

Police took several men in custody in connection with the bombing. No other details were immediately available.

The US Embassy confirmed that among those wounded were three Americans. "What we know is that four Americans are injured," spokesman Ronald Post initially told Agence France Presse. One of the four was later confirmed killed.

A bomb also exploded at a bus terminal in Davao yesterday, although police were unable to confirm if there were any casualties.

In a separate incident yesterday, an explosion at a city health office in Tagum, about 30 kilometers north of Davao City, wounded two people, said military spokesman Col. Daniel Lucero. He gave no other details.

Presidential Spokesman Ignacio Bunye said President Arroyo "strongly condemns the Davao bombing as a brazen act of terrorism which shall not go unpunished." She vowed t
hat "justice will be done."

"I will mobilize the full powers of the presidency to identify and capture not only the inhuman perpetrators of this crime but their conspirators as well," the President said in a statement issued last night.

She ordered the Philippine National Police and the Armed Forces to set up a joint command center in Davao City that would undertake a massive operation "to hunt down the bombers and their accomplices."

Mrs. Arroyo called an emergency meeting of the Cabinet oversight committee on internal security last night.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the bomb attacks but STAR sources in the intelligence community said it could be the handiwork of the al-Qaeda or its Asian counterpart Jemaah Islamiyah since plastic explosives were used.

Ambulances and other emergency vehicles were still picking up casualties from the street outside the airport, cordoned off by yellow police tape and dozens of soldiers armed with rifles.

Many of the victims, who included children, were rushed to Davao City Medical Center. Many bloodied victims were shown on television with hastily applied bandages, and teams of green-suited doctors and nurses were seen in emergency rooms attending to the wounded.

The Department of Health has set up an "information center" to keep track of the dead and wounded.

The bombing was the second against an airport in Mindanao in less than two weeks, and came amid planned deployment of US troops to Sulu, an Abu Sayyaf stronghold.

Local civil defense chief Susan Madrid said the explosion occurred at 5:20 p.m. as scores of people waited for a plane to arrive. Other officials said dozens of passengers queued to get into the building to board two Manila-bound flights.

"It was a very, very loud explosion," Terry Labado, another airport official said, adding she saw "bodies flying."

"We rushed out of the building to see where the explosion happened. We saw many dead," she said.

An airport security official, who did not want to be identified, said the blast went off at the airport’s crowded arrival section and rocked the front of the terminal building, smashing windows and causing considerable damage.

"It happened... a few minutes after a Cebu Pacific flight arrived and people packed the waiting area. There were many people killed. I saw six persons killed on the spot," the official said.

Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, known for his tough approach against crime, toured the hospitals. He ordered all pharmacies and drug stores to remain open to supply medicine to the victims.

Cotabato City Mayor Muslimin Sema, who was at the airport at the time of the blast, said the explosion was so powerful he felt the shockwave even though he was about 100 meters away from the blast.

"There was pandemonium, panic. The scene was too difficult to describe," said Sema, who fought the government as a Moro National Liberation Front guerrilla during the 1970s. The MNLF signed a peace deal with the government in 1996.

It wasn’t immediately clear who was responsible. "We don’t have any suspects yet," Lt. Gen. Narciso Abaya, commander of military forces in the southern Philippines, said. "We also don’t know what kind of explosives was used."

Quoting officials, ABS-CBN television said C-4 military plastic explosive was probably used in the airport attack.

However, Deputy Director General Edgardo Aglipay, operations chief of the Philippine National Police who was in Davao at the time of the blast, told ABS-CBN that they have possible suspects "based on (witnesses’ accounts)" and "information to that effect" but refused to elaborate.

The military blamed Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels for a string of attacks, including one car-bomb explosion at Cotabato City’s airport, following a government offensive that led to the capture of a rebel stronghold in North Cotabato province last month.

The 12,000-strong MILF has been fighting for a separate Muslim homeland in Mindanao for three decades. Despite a shaky 1997 ceasefire, fighting has occasionally flared up.

The Abu Sayyaf Islamic kidnap gang, which has been linked to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist network, has also been blamed for a string of bomb attacks, including a blast in Zamboanga City also in the south in October which killed three people, including a US soldier.

Col. Daniel Lucero, spokesman for the military’s Southern Command, said they are not ruling out the possibility that MILF or communist New People’s Army rebels were involved. Lucero said the MILF has a "tactical alliance" with the NPA.

In a telephone interview with dzMM radio, MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu denied his group was involved in the bomb attacks.

"Mayor Duterte knows how to reach the MILF," Kabalu said, adding that they are "willing to coordinate with any investigation."

"We want this investigated, if they need our participation, we are willing to find out who is behind this attack." Kabalu said offensives were continuing against the military but that the MILF has a policy of not targeting civilians.

Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao Gov. Parouk Hussin, also a former MNLF member, condemned the bombing: "It was virtually satanic and beyond human reason."

Based on an initial investigation it appeared that the explosive was hidden in a backpack, Aglipay said. Television footage showed that the blast had partially ripped the metal roof of the waiting shed. Metal sheets were strewn across the road.

Mindanao’s major cities including Davao were without electricity earlier Tuesday in suspected sabotage attacks by the MILF.

Flights to and from Davao have been suspended.

"The airport will be closed for the time being. The last flight was able to take off, but all incoming flights have been canceled," Davao Vice Mayor Luis Bongoyan said.

He said he would not know if the MILF was involved. "It’s still under investigation," he said.

Philippine Airlines said it will resume flights to Davao once the situation normalizes.

Yesterday, the last PAL flight to Davao (PR 815) was ordered back to Manila around 5:40 p.m. after the blast "about 35 minutes before its scheduled touchdown at Davao airport." — With reports from Roel Pareño, John Unson, Jaime Laude, AFP