A HOMEMADE bomb killed at least eight people and wounded 46 at a gymnasium on the restive southern Philippine island of Mindanao yesterday, police said, with blame quickly falling on a local political squabble.

The target of the attack during a basketball game may have been Vivencio Bataga, the Christian mayor of the largely Muslim town of Parang, who had survived several attempts on his life, military spokesman Julieto Ando told Reuters.

Filipinos are due to vote in national, regional and local elections on May 10. Campaigns in one of Asia?s most turbulent democracies are often marred by violence, intimidation, vote-buying and cheating. ?It felt like an earthquake,? one resident told local radio.

The bomb, hidden on a motorcycle outside the gymnasium, went off at about 4 pm, just after 3 000 basketball fans had listened to a speech by the mayor, police and witnesses said. ?People were crying. People were shouting and others were running,? said one player who was wounded in the leg. ?That?s all I remember because I lost consciousness.?

A radio station in nearby Cotabato City put the death toll at more than 10. The mayor was among the wounded. ?The mayor apparently lost his teeth,? Ando said.

The area around Parang is a stronghold of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the largest of several rebel groups seeking an Islamic state in the south of this overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country. But police played down the chances of a rebel attack. A shaky ceasefire with the MILF has held so far as the rebels inch toward formal peace talks with the government.

?Investigators are looking at the possibility that it was an assassination attempt against the mayor,? General Avelino Razon, the operations chief of the Philippine National Police, told Reuters. ?That?s the primary angle.?

Razon said the bomb was assembled from a 60-mm mortar shell that was tied to the motorcycle. Eid Kabalu, a spokesman for the MILF, denied the rebels had any involvement in the attack. ?The mayor is known to have many political enemies,? Kabalu told Reuters.