A bomb that injured 30 people on a passenger ferry appears to have been designed to cause a fire, the Philippine National Police spokesman said yesterday. The president blamed terrorists, with officials pointing the finger at the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group.
"It was found that low explosive substance was used here, unlike in previous bombings," police spokesman Leopoldo Bataoil said of Sunday's blast aboard the MV Dona Ramona as it was boarding passengers Sunday morning in the southern part of the country.
"If it's a low explosive, the effect would be a burning effect that could cause fire," he said.
He said it was not yet clear why the substance was used instead of a highly explosive substance, but that it was possible the perpetrators' aim was "to instill fear and panic."
The south is the homeland of the country's Muslim minority and a decades-old Islamic separatist insurgency.
"I condemn the ferry bombing ... as a crime against peace and humanity that will not go unpunished," President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said in a statement. "I have directed our security forces to pinpoint and hunt down the perpetrators who have shown a total disregard for the law and human life.
"We shall continue to comb all the known lairs of terrorist cells in the cities and countryside, and cripple if not decimate them," she said.
National police Director General Arturo Lomibao visited Lamitan, on Basilan island, to inspect the ferry, which was preparing to depart with more than 300 passengers for nearby Zamboanga city when the bomb went off. At least six people were badly injured, including a soldier, and nine children were among the casualties.
Bataoil said Lomibao conferred with local officials and created an investigative task force composed of police bomb experts, criminal investigators, crime laboratory experts and officers from the local police command.
Bataoil said police are using witnesses' accounts to make a sketch of the man suspected to have left the bomb, hidden in a cardboard box filled with old clothes, on a counter in the canteen at the rear of the ferry. The suspicious-looking man hurriedly disembarked, said Brigadier General Raymundo Ferrer, who rushed to the scene on Sunday.
Bataoil said Lomibao also visited the wounded victims in hospitals in Zamboanga city.
Ferrer said that no one has claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Abu Sayyaf, which has a presence on Basilan, was a prime suspect.
Last year, a bomb went off on a ferry in Manila Bay, killing 116 people in the country's worst terror attack. Two bombs wounded 30 people in southern Zamboanga city early this month. Both attacks have been blamed on the Abu Sayyaf. At least five homemade bombs believed planted by Muslim militants have been found and safely defused by authorities across Mindanao since last month due to intensified patrols and random checks in public areas, the military said.
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