MANILA, Feb 14: Explosions in the business district of the Philippine capital and two southern cities on Monday killed at least 11 people and wounded nearly 130, with besieged Muslim fighters claiming two of the attacks.
The three blasts came inside an hour as people were leaving work or going out for a dinner on Valentine's Day. "The ground was shaking," said a man in the southern city of General Santos after four people were killed at a shopping mall.
"The people were screaming and running in all directions." Security forces quickly blamed Abu Sayyaf, a small Muslim group associated with Al Qaeda, for the improvised bomb in General Santos and a grenade attack at a bus terminal in Davao that killed a young boy.
In Manila, six people were killed in an explosion on a bus at a commuter terminal near the crowded Glorietta mall, major hotels and the nation's financial and diplomatic core.
"There's a strong possibility the attacks could all be linked," said Norberto Gonzales, the national security adviser. "They have admitted two. We will know more later."
A police intelligence official said investigators had not ruled out a role by Jemaah Islamiah, a regional network of militants linked to Al Qaeda and the suspected fund-raiser for previous attacks by Abu Sayyaf and other Philippine groups.
Abu Solaiman, a senior Abu Sayyaf leader, said on radio his group had carried out the attacks in General Santos and Davao to punish President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo for a heavy military offensive on the south western island of Jolo, its stronghold.
"This is our Valentine's gift for her," Abu Solaiman said. In February last year, more than 100 people died when a bomb sank a ferry at the mouth of Manila Bay.
"ACTS OF TERROR": Nearly 5,000 troops on Jolo are fighting about 800 Abu Sayyaf guerillas and members of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), which signed a peace deal with the government of the mainly Roman Catholic country in 1996.
"They are now trying to divert our attention and doing these cowardly acts," Lt-Gen Efren Abu, the military's chief of staff, said on television. At least 94 people were wounded in the capital and 35 in the two southern cities.
Ms Arroyo surveyed the twisted debris, bloodied clothes and broken glass in Manila without leaving her car as her spokesman, Ignacio Bunye, called the attacks "despicable acts of terror".
"We shall not be intimidated but we must be alert," he said. Police said they had found dynamite and C-4 explosive by a roadside in a Manila suburb earlier in the day.
The last major attack in the capital was in Dec 2000, when 22 people were killed in near-simultaneous bombings of a train, a bus and other public places on a national holiday. -Reuters
