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18 injured in grenade blast in Philippines
Manila News.Net
Tuesday 18th March, 2008 (IANS)
A hand grenade exploded near the Philippine presidential palace Tuesday, wounding at least 18 people, including college students and vendors, security officials said.
The blast occurred as police and military forces went on heightened alert as millions of Filipinos trooped to the provinces and other vacation destinations for the Holy Week, when Thursday and Friday are public holidays.
Geary Barias, chief of Manila police forces, said a man allegedly lobbed the hand grenade outside La Consolacion College, a school just a few metres away from the Malacanang presidential palace.
Barias said initial investigation showed that the blast was linked to a fraternity squabble and not related to anti-government protests calling for the resignation of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
'This is a war among a group of students,' he said.
The Presidential Security Group (PSG), which guards Arroyo, her family and Malacanang, will conduct a separate investigation to confirm the cause of the explosion.
'We are conducting parallel efforts because it happened near Malacanang,' said Brigadier General Romeo Prestoza, PSG commander. 'But the initial report is that this is a fraternity war.'
The explosion occurred as leftist students and activists protested outside the presidential residence in Baguio City, 210 km north of Manila, where Arroyo and her family were vacationing for the Easter holidays.
Chanting 'Oust Gloria,' some 20 students scuffled with policemen who pushed them away from the gate of the presidential Mansion House in the country's summer capital of Baguio City.
Police arrested six protesters, who had posed as tourists before they started shouting anti-government slogans.
Arroyo and her entourage had just arrived at the Mansion House after attending graduation ceremonies at the Philippine Military Academy, the country's top military school, when the protests started.
Anti-government groups have vowed to continue mass protests against Arroyo to demand her resignation over allegations of corruption and electoral fraud.
Calls for Arroyo to step down intensified in February after a witness testified in a Senate inquiry that her husband and a key ally received multimillion-dollar commissions from a scrapped government contract with a Chinese firm.
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Comments on this story
Anonymous
03-18-08, 07:11 PM |
18 injured in grenade blast in Philippines
again the anti-gloria group missed a good chance to rid this country of a hemrode.
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Polar Observer
03-18-08, 09:59 PM |
18 injured in grenade blast in Philippines
The blast and other threats to national security can give the armed forces who are loyal to Arroyo the reason to demand that she declare Martial Law so that she can stay indefinitely with the army supporting her illegal tenure, to maintain the status quo and make themselves richer, and buy time to destroy evidence of wrong doing and move the foreign accounts from Hong Kong to the Cayman Islands.
The civilian population is wary of being used by politicians and business crowd for another people power because the last time they came out for it, Edsa II ousted their idol Estrada and the business crowd with the collaboration of the church, and the quasi intellectuals installed Arroyo as president. And then there was that election when she phoned Garci.
Who ever is hurting now in the pockets are the ones who really want Arroyo out. The corrupt ones whose scams are being brought to light because they are in the wrong side of the political fence. The corrupt ones in the correct side of the political fence are safe for now, what with the armed forces on Arroyo’s side.
Even the students are not immune to being corrupted, as Arroyo and the palace provided free bus rides, free food, and a “meeet the preesident” photo op, so the students can vouch for her.
Meanwhile over priced government transactions are being uncovered left and right. Life goes on, happy days are still on.
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Anonymous
03-19-08, 07:03 AM |
18 injured in the grenade blast in the philippines
this is another way of tricking the people by the gloria arroyo’s administration.they need to show the public that there are so much threat in the public safety etc..etc..and then she will declare martial law!
filipinos are so weary of the way this administration work...(for their own benefits)
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