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MANILA - A homemade bomb exploded outside an air force base in Mindanao on Thursday, killing three people and wounding 19 others in a possible attack by al-Qaida-linked militants, police said.

The cell phone-detonated bomb was apparently concealed in one of several bags of civilian commuters waiting to hitch a ride on an air force C-130 cargo plane outside Edwin Andrews Air Base in Zamboanga city, police Chief Superintendent Jaime Caringal said.

Initial reports revealed that a man and a woman, both waiting to get on the plane, were killed in the blast and 19 others were wounded, he said.

But another victim was added mid Thursday afternoon to the number of those who died, an ANC report says.

Caringal said no one had claimed responsibility for the blast, which also damaged three parked cars and a lawmaker’s office in a two-story building across the street from the base.

Most of the wounded were civilian relatives of soldiers waiting to get a free ride on the Manila-bound C-130.

Two of the lawmaker’s employees were wounded in the blast, including Voltaire Mahatol.

“The blast was so powerful I fell to the floor from my seat in the office,” Mahatol told The Associated Press by telephone.

Investigators were looking at the possibility that al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf militants were involved in the attack.

The militants have clashed in recent days with Philippine marines on nearby southern Basilan island.

“One possibility is that this is an Abu Sayyaf diversionary attack or a retaliation,” Caringal said.

The Abu Sayyaf has targeted Zamboanga city, a predominantly Roman Catholic trading city, in the past. They were blamed by police for
two nearly simultaneous bombings that damaged a cathedral and a commercial building in April.

A security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, said police have
received intelligence reports of a plan by Muslim militants to stage abductions and bombings in three southern cities, including
Zamboanga.

Caringal said he placed police forces in Zamboanga on alert and ordered more street patrols.

Security had already been tightened because several politicians were arriving in the city to register to run for the August elections in
an autonomous Muslim region in the south, he said.

Despite the bombing, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo planned to go ahead with a scheduled flight later Thursday to the southernmost
province of Tawi Tawi, her security aides told reporters.

The military says there are about 300 Abu Sayyaf rebels in the south, scattered in the Zamboanga region and two nearby islands.

U.S. troops providing counterterrorism training to Filipino soldiers are encamped in Zamboanga city but are restricted from public areas
for security reasons. (AP)

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