At least 33 people have been injured in two separate bomb attacks in the Philippines, the first incident, occurred in the central island of Leyte, wounding 27 people while they were watching a boxing match in Hilongos. An unexploded bomb was also found in the town, which is about 620 kilometres south of Manila, says the town’s mayor Albert Villahermosa. A bomb went off on a highway on the southern island of Mindanao barely an hour later, wounding six people.
Mindanao has been wrecked by bombings and other forms of violence carried out by Muslim extremists who consider the region as their ancestral homeland, leading to separatist conflicts with the majority-Christian government.