Philippines Pres. Condemns Bus Terror

The president of the Philippines said Saturday her country would not be bullied by terrorists, a day after yet another deadly bomb blast in the country.

"A few troublemakers with limited capabilities are trying to bully 80 million Filipinos into living in fear and terror in their own homes and neighborhoods," President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said in a televised message.

"Let us not be cowed into submission by those who seek to terrorize us. ... Keep calm."

Friday night's blast in Quezon City killed two people and injured about 20. It was the second deadly bombing attack in two days and the fourth in two weeks in the Philippines.

Arroyo called a meeting of the Cabinet oversight committee on internal security Saturday to discuss the blast. Mayors who attended said it focused on the role of local officials in reporting suspicious activities and thwarting possible attacks.

"We want them (citizens) to be very conscious about the dangers of terrorism. It is now here and so we must help each other, watch out for each other," Manila Mayor Lito Atienza said.

Ben Hur Abalos, mayor of the suburban Mandaluyong city, said police will put up checkpoints around sprawling metropolitan Manila.

On Thursday, bomb blasts killed seven people and wounded 152 in the southern city of Zamboanga. Suspicion fell on Muslim militants.

National police chief Hermogenes Ebdane said investigators are trying to reassemble the device used in the latest blast from fragments, including wires, a paper bag suspected as the bomb container and burnt paper that may have been used as wrapping, recovered by police.

He said a cellular telephone that was recovered was being tested for traces of explosive nitrates to determine whether it was used in the bombing. Police have a sketch of a "potential suspect" — a dark-skinned man in his 20s who was on the bus, he said.

Police intelligence chief Rodolfo Delfin said some passengers told police a woman and a man got off the bus moments before a cellular telephone rang, followed by the blast.

The Office of Civil Defense corrected an earlier figure of three dead, saying police records showed only two people, both males, were killed in the blast. They cited confusion over the state of the dismembered bodies.

"This was definitely an act of terrorism," National Security Adviser Roilo Golez told DZRH radio. "The definition of terrorism is a violent attack on civilians ... but who they (the terrorists) are, we do not know."

Golez earlier said the bombing was similar to a bus bombing on Dec. 30, 2000, one of five in a series of almost simultaneous blasts in the capital that killed 22 people and wounded more than 100 others.

The incident at 10 p.m. occurred on a EDSA highway, one of the capital's main thoroughfares, in Quezon City, despite tightened security following two deadly bombings Thursday in the southern Philippines and a grenade blast early Friday morning in Manila's financial district.

"I was sleeping, then there was a very loud explosion," teenage student Merlyn Villareal, who was aboard the bus but was not injured, told GMA7 television as she fought back tears. "There was chaos, and I was pinned down. I was kicked around and found myself outside the bus."

The explosion in the back of the blue Golden Highway company bus ripped off its roof and part of its carriage and sent debris flying 20-30 meters away. An hour and a half later, workers still had not managed to rerieve the badly mangled bodies from the vehicle, which had about 60 seats.

Officials have said the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group was the most likely suspect for Thursday's bombings in downtown Zamboanga city that killed seven people and injured more than 150. The group recently threatened attacks in retaliation for an ongoing military offensive against it, and has been blamed for an Oct. 2 bombing in Zamboanga that killed four people, including an American Green Beret commando.

Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes speculated that Zamboanga bombings may have been staged by the Abu Sayyaf or the Muslim separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front to either retaliate for or divert attention from simultaneous military offensives against the guerrillas on two fronts in the south.

Meanwhile, Philippine police have captured a leader of the Muslim extremist group Abu Sayyaf who allegedly was involved in the kidnappings of Western tourists two years ago, officials said Saturday.

Mark Bolkerin Gumbahale, 21, also allegedly colluded with Indonesians linked to Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian Muslim group suspected of ties to al-Qaida, in a wave of bombings in Manila on Dec. 30, 2000.

The United States suspects Jemaah Islamiyah of involvement in last weekend's bombings that killed at least 183 people on the Indonesian island of Bali. The group's spiritual leader, Abu Bakar Bashir, 64, was arrested Saturday in Indonesia for his alleged involvement in a series of church bombings there in December 2000.

The announcement came as the government claimed it killed five Muslim guerillas in two clashes in the southern Philippines.

Soldiers battled about 50 rebels, killing three and recovering two M-16 rifles and two M-79 grenade launchers, in the first clash Saturday morning in the foothills of Mount Palaw, said Col. Ernesto Boac, a commander with the 401st Infantry Brigade.

A second firefight, in which two guerrillas were killed and two M-16 rifles recovered, followed 35 minutes later about two miles away in the forested hills, Boac said.

The government said it suffered no casualties in either clash.