MANILA - MUSLIM terrorists from the remote southern Philippines may have been behind a bus bomb attack in the nation's financial hub that killed five people, authorities said on Wednesday.
A mortar shell triggered by a mobile phone led to Tuesday's explosion that ripped apart a bus travelling along one of Manila's main roads, the city's police chief and President Benigno Aquino's national security adviser said.
'A Nokia cellphone is the device they used to trigger the explosion. It acts like a command-detonated explosive,' the security adviser, Cesar Garcia, said on local television.
'The fact that... the device used was an improvised explosive device similar to the ones used by terrorist organisations in the southern Philippines raises the possibility it was a terrorist attack.'
While Mr Garcia said it was too early to say exactly who was behind the blast, he pointed out the attack was very similar to a bus bombing on the same road in Manila that killed four people and injured 36 others on February 14, 2005.
The southern Philippines has long been an area of conflict, with the Muslim population there seeking a state independent from the rest of the mainly Christian country. -- AFP
