Police detonated a small homemade bomb found near the Spanish embassy in Makati City late Saturday, as security forces were on alert after warnings of attacks over the Holy Week.
A Spanish foreign ministry statement issued in Madrid said police safely detonated two devices outside its embassy in Makati City without causing any damage. It said extra security measures were being taken to safeguard Spanish interests in the Philippines.
However, National Capital Region Police Office chief Director Avelino Razon said authorities found only one bomb, in a shoe box contained in an orange plastic bag, and that it lacked components and a blasting cap.
He said a Marine guard had noticed the bomb outside the ACT Tower at the corner of Sen. Gil Puyat Avenue and Nicanor Garcia street. The Spanish embassy is on the fifth floor of the building.
The guard called the police and the improvised bomb was defused.
Razon downplayed the incident, saying the device was not similar to those normally used by either the Jemaah Islamiyah or the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf guerrillas who had threatened a wave of bombings in the Philippines over the Holy Week.
The device was apparently not powerful enough to cause much damage, he said.
Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Director General Arturo Lomibao and Razon personally inspected the area where the explosive was found.
PNP spokesman Senior Superintendent Leopoldo Bataoil said the explosive material was discovered at around 8:30 p.m. on Saturday outside the back door of the building.
He said the bomb, made of gunpowder wrapped with firecracker paper and stuffed in a canister wired to a cell phone and a nine-volt battery, was considered by bomb disposal experts as "incomplete."
"It was detonated and had been rendered safe at 8:45 p.m., or merely 15 minutes after it was found, with no damage to property," Bataoil said.
Southern Police District director Chief Superintendent Wilfredo Garcia said the bomb, being "very crude" and "incomplete," was "never meant to explode, only to scare."
He said any involvement by the Abu Sayyaf has been ruled out.
"When our bomb disposal team arrived, they found firecracker explosives inside the box but there was no blasting cap... so it was not intended to explode," Garcia said.
He added that the bomb "was so weak it hardly left a mark on the pavement when police destroyed it."
A source from the Explosives and Ordnance Division of the Makati City police said the black gunpowder was a chemical used for the manufacture of fireworks but with no capacity to explode.
"Black powder will not explode. We disposed of it in water. It might catch fire if it's accidentally ignited," the source said, adding that they opened the shoe box with a "bomb disruptor."
Makati police chief Superintendent Jovito Gutierrez denied that two bombs were found, saying the "Spanish embassy may have been misinformed."
Police are investigating who left the bomb and why. Makati City officials downplayed reports that those who left the homemade device near the ACT Tower building were actually targeting the Spanish embassy.
Lito Anzures, spokesman for Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay, said the building was "not even a high-profile target."
"Yung mga tunay na terorista, 'di na nananakot (Real terrorists go beyond scare tactics)," he said.
The Makati police assured residents that mobile and foot patrol units will go around the city on a 24-hour basis, and that they should not be alarmed when mobile patrol vehicles turn on their sirens, since it is part of the plan to improve police visibility in the city.
Just over a week ago, an improvised bomb shattered the glass windows of a building where First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo has an office.
No one was hurt when the homemade bomb went off in front of the LTA building. The bomb was believed to have been hurled during a street fight between two gangs.
Security forces across the Philippines have been on heightened alert after threats by the Abu Sayyaf to hit "soft targets" in Manila to avenge the deaths of 22 of the gang's members who died in a failed jailbreak two weeks ago.
Police said bombings planned by the Abu Sayyaf may have been preempted after troops arrested a suspected Muslim militant who provided information that led to last week's discovery of about 600 kilos of explosive materials, enough to flatten an entire shopping mall.
The military said the explosives were intended for terror attacks in Metro Manila during the Holy Week.
Despite the setback, there were indications that militants were pursuing terror plots. One plan by members of the Abu Sayyaf, the JI, and local Muslim converts involved separate attacks in Metro Manila and a southern city using at least two car bombs, according to a security official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Police and troops — already on alert after the Valentine's Day bombing spree — were guarding malls, seaports and airports, bus terminals, churches and other crowded areas yesterday, Razon said.
The tight security will continue as Manila prepares to host a six-day conference next week of more than 1,300 lawmakers, including 46 heads of parliament, from 145 countries, police officials said.
In a related development, peace advocates in central Mindanao asked a team of peace monitors led by Maj. Gen. Zulkefli bin Mohammad Zin of Malaysia to look into reports that renegade members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front are coddling foreign terrorists in known MILF strongholds in southern Mindanao.
Observers said the 60-member monitoring team — tasked to monitor the compliance of a truce between the government and the MILF — was silent on the issue despite the recent arrests of suspected militants who claimed to have been trained in bomb-making in areas covered by the ceasefire.
Leaders of the MILF, who have yet to forge a final peace pact with the government, have denied coddling JI members in the group's strongholds.
Major Gen. Raul Relano, commander of the Army's 6th Infantry Division, earlier said renegade MILF commanders, many of whom still refuse to recognize the leadership of MILF chairman Al-Haj Murad, could be conniving with the JI and the Abu Sayyaf without the knowledge of their superiors. Murad succeeded the MILF's founding chairman, the late Hashim Salamat.
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), on the other hand, said the United States' warning that the Philippines is under threat of "multiple" terrorist attacks was merely a "publicity spin."
CPP spokesman Gregorio Rosal claimed that American covert operatives reportedly based in the country are apparently planning to stage "terrorist attacks in the Philippines that it would blame on other threat groups."
The objective of this plot is to "justify the escalation of US military intervention in the country," he added.
Rosal said it was not "farfetched" that the US military's alleged "dirty tricks department" now plans to bomb certain areas of the country "through its agents and contacts within the Abu Sayyaf."
The Abu Sayyaf's founders were "CIA-trained" in the 1980s and that "instances of collusion" among the US, the Armed Forces of the Philippines, and the Abu Sayyaf "now abound," he added. The CPP, together with its armed wing, the New People's Army, has been tagged by Washington since 2002 as an "international terrorist organization."
Rosal said his group strongly believes that US covert operatives were actually behind the spate of bombings in the country, particularly in Mindanao.
He cited the case of Michael Meiring, an agent of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), who was arrested in a Davao City hotel in 2002 after a bomb he was preparing accidentally exploded.
Rosal said Meiring was never investigated and was "whisked off to the US by American and Philippine intelligence units." |
Communist guerrillas disguised as army troops rescued nine suspected rebels in a daring raid on a jail south of Manila, officials and a rebel spokesman said yesterday. At least four other inmates escaped during the attack. No shots were fired and no one was hurt, police said. Police separately captured three of the escapees a few hours after the late-Saturday raid by the New People's Army at the Batangas City provincial jail, and government forces were hunting down the rest, according to city police Chief Superintendent Nilo Anzo.