One dead in blast near s.Philippines air base

MANILA (Reuters) - A bomb believed to have been set off by a mobile phone exploded outside an air base in the troubled southern Philippines on Thursday, killing one person and wounding 13 others, police and the military said.

The bomb exploded as people were waiting to get on to a military transport plane at Zamboanga air base, said city police chief Lurimel Detran.

Most of the victims were relatives of soldiers who are entitled to travel on military transport.

Military and civilian flights share the single runway at Zamboanga, but the civilian terminal is at a distance of about 3 km (2 miles) from the military area.

Zamboanga is one of the biggest cities in Mindanao in the violence-wracked southern Philippines. There was no immediate claim for the attack, but suspicion was centered on the Abu Sayyaf, a group of Islamic radicals who operate from the islands of Jolo and Basilan, off Zamboanga.

"It's a command detonated bomb, said Colonel Darwin Guerra, army commander in the city. "We recovered fragments of a cell phone in the area."

There was no damage to the air base, he said.

(Reporting by Manny Mogato; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)