Cotabato City, Philippines - Police on Saturday foiled a bombing in the southern Philippines with the discovery of an improvised explosive outside a church, a town police chief said.
Chief Inspector Franklin Anito said the improvised bomb was recovered at dawn in front of a local Christian church in Kabacan town in North Cotabato province, 960 kilometres south of Manila.
Passers-by alerted the police about a suspicious plastic bag left outside the Iglesia ni Cristo (Church of Christ) church in downtown Kabacan, Anito said.
"Bomb experts immediately went to the area and discovered the explosive device," he said. "The device was successfully defused."