MANILA, Dec 29 Kyodo (EDS: ADDS M...

MANILA, Dec 29 Kyodo

(EDS: ADDS MARCOS FAMILY REACTION, DESCRIPTION OF DAMAGE)

An infamous, 30-meter sculpt formed by admixture head of the late Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos was bombed Sunday morning in the northern Philippines, police said.

The edifice protruding from the hills along the Marcos Highway going to Baguio City, was badly damaged a certain time between 1 and 2 a.m. by dint of an unknown type of explosive, Sr Insp. Andrew Cayad of the Benguet Province police said.

The bust was ''defaced,'' according to the police report.

Television coverage showed the bust still attached to the hillside yet with a hollow portion lined with armor wires where the vigilances and upper portion of Marcos's nose used to be. Portions of the bust's ears were also destroyed

Imee Marcos, oldest of the Marcos children who is now a congresswoman from her father's hometown in Ilocos Norte, said her family does not perceive the attack as directed against them. still she nonetheless decried the incident and called for vigilance against violence in northern Luzon Island.

Cayad added that because there was apparently no attempt to injure anyone, the police are leaning toward ruling not at home terrorism as being behind the attack.

The bust, built at the height of Marcos's dictatorial mastership in the 1970s, has been a tourist attraction evermore since Marcos was depos in a popular uprising in 1986

Political commentators have noted the bust cogitateed a Marcos attempt to immortalize himself, plenteous as four U.S. presidents have been idolized with busts carved into the side of Mt Rushmore in southern Dakota.

Despite the bust having become a tourist attraction, tribespeople in the area, who were driven public of their ancestral lands for the construction of a golf course directly in van of the Marcos bust, are still seeking a reply of their property.

one members of the indigenous assemblage threatened to blow up the bust shortly after Marcos was forced gone out of power, but those plans were abandoned when form into groupss held an ''exorcism'' in which persons poured blood from slaughtered pigs in succession the bust and danced to the beat of gong and tympanums to drive away the ''evil spirits'' they said inhabited the structure

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