A powerful booby trap bomb killed one Philippine soldier and wounded 27 others as they patrolled a former stronghold of Al-Qaeda-linked militants on Tuesday, the military said.
The soldiers were patrolling the outskirts of a remote camp captured last month from Abu Sayyaf extremists when the device went off, local army commander Colonel Ricardo Visaya told AFP.
The Abu Sayyaf had formerly used the camp on the southern island of Basilan, to hide many of their kidnap victims until a large military assault dislodged the rebels in March, Visaya said.
‘The camp had a lot of improvised explosive devices planted around it... to strengthen (the extremists’) defensive position. They are very difficult to detect,’ he told AFP.
He described the device as an old booby trap left behind by the Abu Sayyaf before they abandoned the camp. It was set off when soldiers tripped on it.
Helicopters were deployed to airlift the wounded to a military hospital but one soldier died before he could be treated while six others remained in critical condition, Visaya said.
The heavily-forested island of Basilan is a known stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf, a group founded with seed money from late Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in the 1990s.