Zamboanga City, Philippines - Three people were killed and 13 injured when a homemade bomb exploded Thursday near an office of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in a southern Philippine city, police and military officials said. The explosion occurred in front of a building housing the offices of USAID, a congressman and the Philippine military's mutual fund in Zamboanga City, 875 kilometres south of Manila, Police Senior Superintendent Lurimer Detran said.
The building was just across from the Philippines' Edwin Andrews Air Force Base, where civilian commuters were massing outside its gate to take a C-130 flight.
The explosion was triggered by a "command-detonated" homemade bomb that appeared to have been hidden in one of the bags of the civilian commuters, Army Colonel Darwin Guerra said.
"We cannot yet determine who is behind the attack, but this is an act of terrorism," he said.
Detran said the glass panels of the USAID office and other offices in the building were damaged.
He said all the injured were civilians and were rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment. The wounded included four engineers working with a USAID-funded project, Detran added.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf rebels and Jemaah Islamiyah militants are known to operate in the city.
