COTABATO (Philippines), May 8: A powerful homemade bomb tore through a packed public market in the southern Philippine city of Tacurong on Tuesday, killing three people and seriously wounding 33, police said.

The military said the attack bore the hallmarks of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), the Al Qaeda’s Southeast Asian arm which has, according to latest intelligence, linked up with Philippines-based militants.

The bombing came just a week before national elections and two weeks after US warnings of imminent terror attacks in the area.

Witnesses reported a horrific scene of dead and bleeding wounded strewn about the smoking rubble of a billiards hall in the market where bomb squad officers said the device had been placed.

Provincial police Chief Teng Tacao said two were killed on the spot, but the military reported that another victim died later. Thirty-three others were in serious condition with shrapnel and burn wounds.

“The area was a mess, shoes and slippers littered the ground. There is blood on the ground. Stalls were shattered. There was chaos,” said Roman Catholic bishop Colin Bagaforo, who heads the church-run Notre Dame University just 50 metres from the blast site.

The explosion “shook the ground,” said Bagoforo, who was among the first civilians to offer help to the wounded.

Regional military chief Major General Reymundo Ferrer blamed the JI for the attack, apparently designed to ease pressure on militants in nearby Jolo Island.

“Investigation by the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit showed the bomb had the signature of the JI,” Ferrer said.

“It is highly possible the JI could be behind this fresh attack because the targets are purely civilians,” he said, discounting suggestions the attack could be election-related.

Late last month, police foiled a bomb attack in Tacurong and found a device made from 81-millimetre mortar rounds, a trademark of Muslim militants operating in the southern Philippines who have been linked to Al Qaeda.

Separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels are known to operate in areas near Tacurong and other parts of Mindanao Island, but the group’s spokesman denied it had a hand in the attack.

“That is not our style,” Eid Kabalu told the news agency. “It may be some groups out to sow terror ahead of the elections.” The 12,000-strong MILF is negotiating a peace deal with Manila, and has publicly disowned links to the JI and Abu Sayyaf, both on the US government’s terrorist watchlist.

National mid-term elections will be held on May 14, and the run-up to the vote has been marred by assassinations and other violence. Police said on Wednesday that 20 people had been killed in election-related violence.

Philippine troops in the south of the country have been stretched in an ongoing campaign with several Muslim militant groups, as well as by the pre-election bloodshed.

Eight people were killed and dozens were injured in January when crude bombs exploded in three Mindanao cities ahead of a Southeast Asian summit on the central island of Cebu. No one has been arrested for those attacks.

In late April the US embassy in the Philippines issued an alert about travel to central Mindanao, the second-largest island in the country.

“The embassy has information that a terrorist group may be planning to carry out bombing attacks in central Mindanao over the next several days,” it said, urging Americans to “carefully consider plans” to visit the area.

Several JI militants led by Indonesians Umar Patek and Dulmatin are holed out with Abu Sayyaf militants in nearby Jolo Island. The US government has offered a 10-million-dollar reward for the capture of Dulmatin and one million dollars for Patek for helping to mastermind the October 2002 bombings in Bali, Indonesia that left 202 people dead.—AFP