MANILA — Suspected Abu Sayyaf extremists have detonated a pipe bomb that killed a soldier and wounded eight others in an attack that was followed by a brief gun battle in a far-flung town in the southern Philippines. An army infantry battalion commander, Lt. Col. Cristobal Paolo Perez, says the seven militants who attacked the military convoy on Tuesday may have been trained by a Malaysian terror suspect, Abu Anas, who has been hiding in the jungle strongholds of the local insurgents. The attack occurred in Tipo Tipo village on Basilan island. Perez says the pipe bomb used in Tuesday's attack was similar to homemade explosives seized by the military in an Abu Sayyaf stronghold in Basilan, where Anas has made bombs and provided bomb-making training to Abu Sayyaf militants. — AP
