COTABATO CITY, Philippines (Mindanao Examiner / Oct. 05, 2007) – Two bomb attacks late Friday have killed two people and wounded more than two dozen others in the southern Philippines, officials said.
Officials said the blasts occurred in the busy business district of Kidapawan City in North Cotabato province at around 7 p.m.
Two improvised explosives, one of them attached to a parked mini-van, detonated one after the other along Quezon Boulevard, said Major Julieto Ando, a regional army spokesman.
“Two people are killed in the blasts,” Ando told the Mindanao Examiner.
Among the dead was a ten-year old girl, Annie Mae Lozada.
No groups claimed responsibility for the twin attacks, but previous bombings in the area had been blamed by Filipino authorities to the Indonesian terror group Jemaah Islamiya and their local counterpart, the Abu Sayyaf.
Maj. Gen. Raymundo Ferrer, commander of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said the bombs exploded in front of the Sugni department store and another establishment called Survived Marketing.
“At least 32 people are also wounded,” Ferrer said in a separate interview, adding, the number of injured was increasing.
He did not who was behind the bombings or whether it was connected to the Jemaah Islamiya or the Abu Sayyaf. Ferrer has said that security forces were tracking down Jemaah Islamiya militants in central Mindanao, including Zulkifli bin Hir alias Marwan.
Last month, two homemade bombs exploded inside two commuter buses in Marbel town and in Cotabato City.
Australia last month warned of terror attacks in the southern Philippines and banned its citizens from traveling to Mindanao.
Aside from Zulkifli bin Hir, authorities said two Jemaah Islamiya bomb-makers, Dulmatin and Umar Patek, both tagged by Jakarta as behind the 2002 Bali bombings, are also hiding in the southern region and so are about three dozen other accomplices. (Mindanao Examiner)
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