Blast rocks shop in Cotabato City

Manila: A bomb exploded and another one was defused in the southern Philippines yesterday, a day after twin bomb attacks killed 12 people and wounded 40 others in another southern city.

President Gloria Arroyo ordered a search for the attackers, who were identified as local and foreign terror groups, senior officials said.

A bomb exploded in a store on Don Rufino Alonzo Street, just 10 metres away from South Seas Mall in Cotabato City before noon yesterday, said Senior Superintendent Peraco Macacua, Cotabato City police chief.

A man in a white T-shirt left a package in the store just minutes before the explosion which caused major damage in the area,

The third bomb looked like the explosives that were used in the twin blasts in Makilala, North Cotabato, and Tacurong City in Sultan Kudarat, which killed 14 people and injured 40 others on Tuesday, Macacua added.

Meanwhile, bomb experts defused a bomb outside the municipal hall of Makilala, in North Cotabato also yesterday, said Lt Col Bartolome Bacarro, Armed Forces spokesman. It was composed of two 81mm mortar shells and two nine-volt batteries and could be detonated through a mobile phone, said Bacarro, adding an electrician discovered the bomb inside a bag while repairing electrical wiring outside the municipal hall.

The deadly bomb would have killed people and destroyed the building if it exploded, said Bacarro.

Relatives mourned their dead as workers cleaned up the blood and other debris that littered the streets where the bomb attacks occurred.

President Arroyo ordered the police, military, and the ceasefire committees of the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, to hunt the bomb attackers.