MANILA – Philippine police said the death toll in the nation’s worst act of election-related violence rose to 57 as more bodies were exhumed from a mass grave on the southern island of Mindanao.
Police and the National Bureau of Investigation were to summon several people for questioning today for the November 23rd attack on supporters of a local politician in Maguindanao province, President Gloria Arroyo’s office said.
Her party expelled three members of a clan linked to the ambush. The “government is going very seriously on the case”, Eduardo Ermita, Mrs Arroyo’s executive secretary, said at a briefing in Manila.
Many of the victims, among them women who were raped and journalists, were found in a mass grave after about 100 gunmen stopped a convoy of people on their way to file the politician’s application to run for governor of Maguindanao, the military said.
Mrs Arroyo yesterday put Maguindanao and neighbouring Sultan Kudarat province under a state of emergency to prevent further violence in the region.
The number of deaths is the highest from a single incident of election-related violence in the nation’s history, according to the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism.
Elections in the Philippines are often marred by bloodshed, with provincial politicians maintaining private militias.
About 126 candidates and supporters were killed in the months leading to the 2007 elections and 186 in 2004, according to the Philippine Daily Inquirer. – (Bloomberg)