At least 17 dead in Filipino airport bombing

A powerful bomb hidden in a backpack killed at least 17 people today when it ripped through a crowd outside an airport in the southern Philippines.

More than 100 people were wounded, said officials in Davao on Mindanao island. They said bodies were thrown through the air by the blast.

No one claimed responsibility for the explosion, but the army have blamed a string of recent attacks on the Moro Islamic Liberation Front rebels, including a car bombing last month at nearby Cotabato airport.

Davao civil defence spokeswoman Susan Madrid said today’s blast happened at 5:20pm (1020 GMT) as scores of people waited for a plane to arrive.

“It was a very, very loud explosion,” said airport official Terry Labado. “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 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,” he said. “There were many people killed. I saw six persons killed on the spot.”

Madrid said 17 people were killed and more than 100 injured. One hospital alone reported 91 casualties. The injured included young children.

TV footage showed the area in front of the terminal wrecked by the blast, with pieces of metal strewn across the road. Flights to and from Davao were suspended.

Davao Mayor Rodrigo Duterte ordered all chemists to stay open to supply medicine to the victims.

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.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo “strongly condemns the Davao bombing as a brazen act of terrorism which shall not go unpunished,” her spokesman Ignacio Bunye said.

Arroyo called an emergency meeting of the Cabinet oversight committee on internal security for later today.

The MILF rebels have been fighting for a separate Muslim homeland in the impoverished southern Philippines for three decades. Despite a shaky 1997 ceasefire, fighting has occasionally flared up.

One woman was reportedly killed and 10 others wounded when a car bomb went off at the Cotabato airport on February 20.