Bomb neutralized near US Embassy in Manila: Police

A member of the police bomb disposal unit places a water bomb disruptor at the site where a suspicious package was found to have it detonated, along Roxas Boulevard near the US Embassy in the Philippine’s capital, Manila, November 28, 2016. (Photo by AFP)

Police in the Philippines say they have neutralized a bomb near the US Embassy in the capital, Manila.

The improvised explosive device was found in a garbage can by a street sweeper about 200 meters from the embassy compound on Monday.

The package was deemed suspicious and a bomb squad was dispatched. Two explosions were heard as technicians conducted controlled detonation.

Police have said a militant group, which is affiliated to Daesh and is operating in the southern Philippines, is likely to blame for the attempted terrorist attack.

The militant group, known as the Maute, has set up camps on the southern restive Mindanao Island of the Philippines, and military operations have been going on against them over the past couple of days.

On Sunday, the Philippines’ military shelled the positions of the group, killing 11 of them and wounding five others. Clashes between the militants and military forces first began on Saturday.

Three members of the Maute group, which has sworn allegiance to the Takfiri Daesh terrorist outfit, were arrested in the Philippines last month and were accused of a bombing attack in September that left 15 people dead in Davao, President Rodrigo Duterte’s hometown and Mindanao’s largest city.

Daesh is mainly active in West Asia, where it is losing captured territory to forces of regional governments, but has recently emerged, though to lesser extents, in North Africa and now the Philippines.