Three people died while 15 others were wounded in an explosion near a public market in Datu Saudi Ampatuan, Maguindanao province, early Monday, a military official said. Col. Jonathan Ponce, spokesman of the Philippine Army's 6th Infantry Division, said the blast hit a public market in Barangay Kitango at 6:30 A.M. He said the casualties were immediately brought to a nearby hospital. The three dead included a man who seen placing one of the devices inside a garbage bin at a coffee shop near the market. “Military bomb experts told me that two bombs simultaneously exploded and they are still looking for the third explosive,” said Eduardo Vasquez, a Catholic priest who witnessed the attack. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blasts, which occurred in a region troubled by a long-running Moro separatist insurgency. Eid Kabalu, spokesman for the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, denied the guerrillas were responsible. “Villagers saw soldiers arrive in the area at dawn and there was an explosion several hours later,” he told reporters by telephone. The Maguindanao bombing followed the killing of seven policemen and two soldiers in separate incidents on Basilan island on Saturday and Sunday. Suspected Abu Sayyaf militants killed the seven policemen in an ambush after their comrades shot to death two government soldiers in a separate attack in Basilan province on Sunday, security officials said. Navy Rear Admiral Alex Pama said suspected Abu Sayyaf gunmen opened fire Sunday on a police convoy negotiating a dirt road in far-flung Sumisip township on Basilan island, killing the seven policemen. Two other policemen survived the ambush and were taken to a hospital. In a separate attack late Saturday, another group of suspected Abu Sayyaf gunmen killed two unarmed soldiers involved in the construction of a school in nearby Tipo Tipo township, also in Basilan. The soldiers, who belonged to an army engineering brigade, walked off a school construction site to buy cigarettes when they were fired upon, Pama said.
