Improvised bomb found at Kalibo airport—police

MANILA, Philippines—Philippine authorities have found and disarmed a small bomb at Kalibo International Airport, which serves the resort island of Boracay, one of the country’s main tourist hotspots, police said Wednesday.

Security staff found the improvised explosive device among cargo being processed at the airport on Tuesday night, national police spokesman Chief Superintendent Agrimero Cruz said.

Police experts brought the device, inside a plastic envelope about the size of a magazine, out of the airport and had it safely detonated, according to Cruz.

He said the device was apparently dropped off at the airport counter of a cargo forwarding company and bore a name and address in the southern island of Mindanao, a hotbed of Islamic militants and Muslim guerrillas.

However he said authorities did not know who dropped off the package.

“We can’t speculate on who was behind it,” Cruz said, adding he also had no details on the potential power of the bomb.

The central Philippine airport handles dozens of flights a day, linking Kalibo with Chinese and South Korean cities as well as those in the Philippines.

Kalibo is one of the main gateways for tourists to Boracay, which attracted nearly a million visitors last year. A smaller airport at Caticlan handles smaller, turboprop aircraft.