22 Soldiers Killed in Mine, Bomb Attacks on Philippine Military

At least 22 government soldiers were reported killed today in two of the bloodiest attacks of the year on the Philippine armed forces.

Military authorities said this afternoon that three people were killed and at least 20 wounded at the Philippine Military Academy in the northern city of Baguio when a hand-made time bomb exploded under a grandstand. However, air force intelligence sources in Manila said 18 officers and enlisted men had been killed and 50 others wounded in the bombing.

President Corazon Aquino is scheduled to deliver a key address at the academy on Sunday.

In a separate announcement, the military reported today that 19 army soldiers were killed when a V-150 armored personnel carrier and a government troop truck hit land mines planted by Communist rebels in the province of Quezon, 200 miles southeast of Manila.

The academy in Baguio was sealed off to all civilians and journalists immediately after the blast this morning. Military authorities began evacuating the wounded to hospitals in Manila, and army bomb squads started sweeping the sprawling academy grounds in search of more bombs.

The armed forces chief of staff, Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, who was celebrating his birthday by parachuting with his men in a nearby province when the explosion occurred, rushed to the academy this afternoon to personally investigate the incident.

There was no comment from the presidential palace on whether Aquino still planned to attend this weekend’s graduation ceremonies, an annual tradition that the president had hoped to use to improve her government’s ties with the nation’s 200,000-member military.

It also remained unclear who was responsible for the bombing, which took place during a rehearsal for the two-day commencement. Military intelligence sources in Manila speculated that it could have been the work of disgruntled factions within the armed forces or the nation’s Communist rebels, who have intensified their attacks on government and military targets in the past month.

The land-mine attack was one of the bloodiest single ambushes by the Communist New People’s Army in the 18-year insurgency, and the third time the rebels have used locally made land mines in their armed rebellion.

Senior rebel commanders have said in recent interviews that they used the 60-day cease-fire that expired on Feb. 8 to perfect and manufacture both land mines and time bombs as part of an escalation of what they call a “protracted people’s war” against the government.

In the attack Tuesday on the convoy in Quezon, an estimated 200 rebels captured at least 27 high-powered rifles, military authorities reported. The attack came just four days after what appeared to be the same guerrilla unit raided a lumber headquarters nearby, taking four bulldozers and a cargo truck.

Both attacks took place on Quezon’s Bondoc Peninsula, where military authorities have said they are planning a major counteroffensive against the rebels.