At least 30 wounded in bomb attack on ferry in southern Philippines
(AFP)
Updated: 2005-08-29 09:00

At least 30 people, including several children, were wounded in a bomb attack on a ferry believed to have been carried out by Abu Sayyaf Islamic militants, AFP reported.

The explosion occurred while passengers were boarding the Dona Ramona ferry at the Basilan island port of Lamitan, which was built with American aid money and formally opened by US officials last week.

The ferry was preparing to leave port for Zamboanga city, across the Basilan strait, when the bomb exploded causing extensive damage and chaos.

National police spokesman Chief Superintendent Leopoldo Bataoil said that prior to the blast police had received "advisories that there will be possibilities of terrorist incidents".

Island commander Brigadier General Raymundo Ferrer (L) gestures as he briefs southern military chief Lieutenant General Alberto Braganza at the site of an explosion on the lower level of a passenger ferry in Basilan island in the southwestern Philippines August 28, 2005.[Reuters]

"We are not discounting the possibility that the Abu Sayyaf group is the one behind this," he said.

The Abu Sayyaf, which security experts say has received support from Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network, is known to operate in Lamitan, a mixed Muslim-Christian town.

Founded in the early 1990s the group has degenerated into a criminal gang, specializing in kidnap-for-ransom and bomb attacks. It is on the US State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations.

"We strongly condemn this attack on innocent civilians," said President Gloria Arroyo's spokesman Ignacio Bunye.

"The police are under strict instructions to get to the bottom of this and to take necessary action to protect the citizens and bring the perpetrators to justice," he added.

An eyewitness said he saw a man place a box on a counter in the vessel's canteen on the lower deck near liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) tanks.

"The man left the box and minutes later there was a huge explosion. We were engulfed in a ball of fire that quickly spread," Edwin Calunsag, an army soldier who was travelling with his wife to visit their two young children in Zamboanga, told AFP. Both he and his wife were injured in the blast.

Basilan military chief Brigadier General Raymundo Ferrer said the attack "was purely to sow terror".

Armed forces spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Buenaventura Pascual in Manila said investigators had "recovered incendiary material" from the rubble. He said gunpowder and an unidentified chemical was used in the device.

The area was "in chaos" and a thick smell of gunpowder hung in the air, said provincial spokesman Cris Puno. The lower deck of the vessel was badly damaged, and among the rubble were slippers, clothes and broken bottles.

"There were children among those wounded," Puno told AFP.

The blast at Lamitan port came after the Abu Sayyaf carried out a bomb attack that wounded 26 people on August 10 in Zamboanga.

Security forces have been on heightened alert for more bombings after three Abu Sayyaf suspects in the Zamboanga blast were freed on bail.

In 2000, the group seized dozens of mostly European hostages in a daring cross-border raid on a Malaysian diving resort. They were subsequently set free after millions of dollars were paid in ransom.

The following year they seized three Americans and several Filipinos from a resort in the western Philippine island of Palawan. All the Filipinos were freed, but two of the Americans were killed -- one of them beheaded.

The Abu Sayyaf was also blamed for firebombing a passenger ferry off Manila last year, killing more than 100 people in the Philippines' worst terrorist attack.

Security experts say the Abu Sayyaf has established links with the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), blamed for the October 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people.

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