Thursday, January 11, 2007 Bombing in GenSan: 6 killed
MANILA - A bomb explosion rocked a lottery outlet across the public market in General Santos City yesterday, killing at least six people and wounding 22 others.
The explosion came amid warnings that Muslim militants may try to disrupt this weekend’s Asian regional summit.
Senior Supt. Alfredo Toroctocon, the city’s police chief, said that three people died instantly and two succumbed to wounds.
Staff at the St. Elizabeth Hospital reported another person died on arrival, bringing the death toll to six.
Chief Supt. German Doria, the regional police chief, said police had no suspects immediately but that the regional militant network Jemaah Islamiyah and its allies, the Abu Sayyaf, “usually are the ones doing all these explosions in the region.”
But he said police also were looking into the possibility that the blast stemmed from the failure of the lottery outlet operator to pay winners of a lottery draw.
“This lotto outlet closed three days ago because many bettors won... then all of a sudden an explosion occurred in front of the Lotto outlet,” Doria said.
Philippine National Police Chief Oscar Calderon, who is in Cebu to oversee security for the summit, said earlier yesterday that militants may try to embarrass the government, a staunch US ally in counter-terrorism, by staging attacks during the summit.
Chief Supt. Romeo Ricardo, director of the national police Intelligence Group, said police and army troops have launched operations against militants throughout the archipelago to prevent them from carrying out attacks.
Those operations led to the killing of five members of the Abu Sayyaf and an Indonesian militant in Tawi-Tawi province last week, and the arrest of a bomb suspect two days earlier just southeast of Manila, he said.
Yesterday, military Chief of Staff Gen. Hermogenes Esperon said troops killed another senior Abu Sayyaf member, Binang Sali.
Terrorism is a concern at the summit of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations and their partners from Australia, China, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand and India.
Australia said Monday it had received information suggesting terrorists were “in the final stages of planning attacks” on a range of targets in the Philippines, particularly in the south.
But Philippine officials insisted security for the summit was tight, with police and troops on the highest alert. (AP)
