Boy, 5, killed in North Cotabato bus bombing

ALEOSAN, North Cotabato, Philippines — A five-year-old boy died when a bomb exploded in a bus along the Cotabato-Davao Highway in this town yesterday.

The boy died while being treated in a hospital.

Two other children aged three and five months were among the six other persons who suffered shrapnel wounds in different parts of the body.

Responding personnel of the local police and Aleosan Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office took the victims to various hospitals.

Police said the Mindanao Star bus was passing through a stretch of the highway in Purok Narra in Barangay San Mateo when the bomb went off.

Probers said the bomb was hidden in a baggage left by an unidentified person who boarded in Kabacan town and disembarked in Pikit.

In Basilan, Junayra Saad, 47, died when she accidentally stepped on a string connected to an improvised bomb on her way to a creek in Barangay Benembengan in Sumisip town yesterday. – Emmanuel Tupas, Roel Pareño