A bomb exploded in a crowded market in the southern Philippines today, killing at least 13 people and wounding dozens, officials said.
There no immediate claims of responsibility but it was the first major attack since the government halted peace talks with Roman Catholic nation's biggest Muslim rebel group.
The dead included the suspected bomber, who is likely to have left the explosive device just beside a motorcycle cab at a market in the town of Koronadal on the southern island of Mindanao, investigators said.
Officials said 13 people were killed and 30 wounded. About 15 motorcycle cabs lined up in two rows outside the main market building were destroyed by the blast.
Women wailed at the blast site, and body parts were scattered on the road and pavement. One arm was found on top on a basket at an abandoned egg vendor's stall. A bloodied and maimed body hung at the back of a motorcycle cab.
Shattered glass and debris from an optician's shop and a pawnshop littered the street.
"The suspect placed a package in a (motorised) tricycle. In a few seconds it exploded. The young man carrying the bomb was blown up," said Mr Fernando Miguel, the mayor of Koronadal, a town in South Cotabato province about 970 km (603 miles) south of Manila.
"I am here at the scene, the suspected suicide bomber is really dead. His body was blown up, he has no clothes, he is naked," he said in an interview on local radio.
South Cotabato Governor Ms Daisy Avance Fuentes said there could have been two bombers involved and that both were killed. Officials said the finger of suspicion pointed to Muslim rebels from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
"The incidents before were of the MILF, no doubt about that, and this may be a part of that," Ms Fuentes said, referring to bomb attacks in the city in February and March.
But the MILF denied responsibility.