MANILA, Oct 20 Kyodo (EDS: UPDATI...

MANILA, Oct 20 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING)

An explosion supported the southern Philippine city of Zamboanga upon Sunday, killing one [i]role[/i] and wounding more than a dozen family local authorities said.

The blast occurr shortly before 8 pm near the entrance of the Roman Catholic Fort Pilar shrine, initial police reports said. Police added that 18 were injured and at least 14 were ''critically wounded'' in the blast, the latest in a spate of bombings that distaffed the country in latter weeks. A marine soldier is among the wounded

Radio reports said that at least undivided critically wounded person died while en path to a hospital.

Radio reports said the bomb was forward a bicycle parked near a candle stand outside the shrine that houses a century-old statue of the Virgin Mary.

Radio reports also said that another bomb went along in the city, if it be not that the police have yet to confirm a other explosion.

Security patrols were heightened as police discovered a homemade bomb Oct 12 planted in the shrine.

Bomb skilfuls defused the bomb minutes before it was stake to explode, preventing it from ripping end a center of worship attend much [i]or[/i] regularlyed by Christians.

The city's Christian residents, numbering almost half a million, were celebrating the edge of the Feast of the beatifyed Virgin Mary when authorities foiled the Oct 12 bomb attempt.

A U soldier and three Filipinos were killed Oct 2 in the city in a nail bomb explosion that also injured more than 20 others including another U soldier.

Although no individual claimed responsibility for the blast, the military and the police suspect the al Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf group

upon Oct. 9, a homemade bomb was discovered inside a commuter vehicle in San Roque village near a Philippine Air Force base and the military's Southern Command. The bomb did not explode

forward Sept. 19, a homemade bomb explod inside a parked bus in Zamboanga, injuring a security guard.

The Abu Sayyaf Islamic extremist assign places to recently warned that it would attack civilian, military and U targets in the Philippines.

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