Philippines bombings

South Philippines on alert after bombs kill six

Article published on the 2009-07-07 Latest update 2009-07-07 14:16 TU

Police at the site of one of the bombings
(Photo: Reuters)

Leave has been cancelled for military and police in the Philippines after two bombs killed at least six people in the troubled south of the country Tuesday. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has ordered a heightened security alert throughout the troubled region and convened a top-level security meeting in response to the blasts on Jolo island and Iligan city.

Police say that six civilians were killed and 30 wounded by the first bomb, which hit a commercial area on Jolo isand. Two hours later a car bomb went off next to a parked military jeep in Iligan city, wounding at least ten people, three of them soldiers.

Police say that they disarmed another bomb near Jolo's Mount Carmel Catholic cathedral and a third suspicious package was detonated.

"This is a signature bomb attack of the Abu Sayyaf," said local anti-terror task force chief Major General Juancho Sabban of the Jolo blast.

Abu Sayyaf, a group with its roots in Islamic militancy which is well-known for its kidnappings, is active in the area and is believed to have links with the south-east Asian terror network, Jemaah Islamiya, which, in turn, is linked to Al-Qaeda.

"This is no longer isolated, but orchestrated," Arroyo's senior adviser for the south, Jesus Dureza, told reporters in Cotabato city, which was the scene of another deadly bombing on Sunday.

Dureza said that Jemaah Islamiya recently trained dozens of local bombers in the south. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which officials blamed for Sunday's bomb, accused right-wingers in the military of being behind that blast.

US forces, whose presence in the south has aroused controversy, were seen securing the Jolo bomb site and gathering evidence.