Bombing suspect killed in Maguindanao clash

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MANILA, Philippines — A bombing suspect was killed in a gunbattle Monday when he clashed with police commandos who were trying to arrest him in the southern Philippines, police said.

National police Senior Superintendent Reuben Sindac said police special forces, backed by agents of the Presidential Anti-organized Crime Commission, were trying to serve a warrant to Muslim militant Yusop Kusain for his alleged involvement in a deadly 2007 bombing.

Sindac said Kusain hurled a grenade and opened fire on authorities, wounding two police officers, before he was killed in Datu Paglas town in Maguindanao province.

Aside from the 2007 bombing, which killed at least four people near a tuna canning plant in southern General Santos city, Kusain had also been linked to a number of other bomb attacks blamed on Muslim radicals in the past, police said.

The Philippine government hopes a peace deal it will sign soon with the main Muslim rebel group, the 11,000-strong Moro Islamic Liberation Front, would help ease decades of violence in the south, homeland of minority Muslims in the largely Roman Catholic nation.