19 killed in Filipino blast
The government called it a "brazen act of terrorism." With many of the injured in serious condition, officials feared the death toll could rise.
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which has been blamed for a string of attacks including a car bombing at a nearby airport last month, denied responsibility for the blast at Davao airport on Mindanao island.
The dead included a boy, a girl, 10 men including one American and seven women, officials said.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who invited US troops to help train Filipino soldiers in counter-terrorism later this year, said "several men" were detained in connection with the blast. She said she ordered police and the military "to hunt down the bombers and their accomplices."
Davao civil defence spokeswoman Susan Madrid said the explosion occurred at 5.20pm (10.20pm GMT) as scores of people waited in front of the airport for a plane to arrive. About an hour later, a second blast 30 kilometres to the north injured three people.
Police said the bomb was planted in the middle of the airport's covered waiting area and could be heard five kilometres away. "It was a very, very loud explosion," Terry Labado, an airport official said. "I saw bodies flying. We rushed out of the building to see where the explosion happened," she said. "We saw many dead."
An airport security official, who did not want to be identified, said the bomb rocked the front of the terminal building, smashing windows and causing considerable damage.
"It happened ... a few minutes after a Cebu Pacific flight arrived and people packed the waiting area. There were many people killed. I saw six persons killed on the spot," the official said. Ms Madrid said 19 people were killed and 147 were injured among them young children. One hospital alone reported 91 casualties. TV footage showed pieces of metal strewn on the road in front of the airport. Some of the roof splinters from the demolished waiting shed landed on the tarmac about 100 metres away.
Three Americans were among the wounded. They were identified as Barbara Stevens, 33, her nine-month-old son Nathan and her daughter Sarah. They were brought to Davao Doctors Hospital, hospital staff said. Another American, identified by Davao Medical Centre as William Hyde, died of his injuries on the operating table, said Dr Manuel Tan. The US Embassy confirmed the death of an American, but refused to disclose other details.
Ms Stevens said in a telephone interview from the hospital that her family, Southern Baptist missionaries who have been living in the Philippines for five years, had just arrived from Manila when the bomb went off. She said Hyde was waiting to pick them up. "I just heard it explode to my side," she said.
National Police Deputy Chief Edgar Aglipay, who was in Davao at the time of the blast, told a Manila radio station that the explosion was caused by a bomb hidden inside a backpack.
Ms Arroyo called an emergency meeting of the Cabinet oversight committee on internal security. She issued a statement calling the bombing "a brazen act of terrorism."
