At least 12 die in Phillipines bombing

At least 12 people died and 27 were injured today when a bomb exploded at a busy department store in the southern Philippines city of General Santos, police said.

Two other bombs reportedly went off at the Radio Mindanao Network office a few minutes later, and

another explosion was reported two hours afterward elsewhere in the city.

Police said they received a call claiming 18 bombs had been planted around the largely Christian city of 800,000 people in the predominantly Muslim south.

Senior Superintendent Bartolome Baluyot, police chief for the central Mindanao region, said early reports indicated that an unknown number of home-made bombs had been planted inside and outside the Gensan Fitmart department store near the central city plaza.

Councillor Eduardo Leyson said one exploded in a pedicab in front of the store shortly after 3pm (8am Irish time), and there were unconfirmed reports of another nearly simultaneous blast.

At least two unexploded bombs were discovered under a lorry parked in front of the store - they were being dealt with by the police bomb squad.

The injured were taken to hospitals in the city, a little over 620 miles southeast of Manila.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

In the past, police have suspected the Muslim extremist group Abu Sayyaf and the fundamentalist group Moro Islamic Liberation Front of being responsible for bomb blasts in the city.

An Indonesian man who told police he planned a series of nearly simultaneous bombings that killed 22 people in Manila on December 30, 2000, pleaded guilty Thursday to explosives possession after leading police to a buried cache of more than a ton of TNT, detonating cords and M-16 rifles in January in General Santos.

General Santos is about 130 miles from Basilan island, where the Abu Sayyaf group has been holding an American missionary couple and a Filipino nurse hostage for nearly 11 months.

About 160 US special forces troops are on the island to train Filipino troops assigned to crush the group, which is linked to al Qaida.