Philippines declares emergency as massacre toll hits 46

SANIAG, Philippines, (AFP) - The Philippines declared a state of emergency in parts of the volatile south on Tuesday as anger spiralled over a savage political massacre that left at least 46 people dead.
Police on Mindanao island pulled bullet-riddled bodies from shallow graves after gunmen allegedly hired by a local political chief abducted then shot dead a group of politicians from a rival clan and accompanying journalists.
As thousands of troops fanned out across the ultra-tense Maguindanao province on Mindanao, President Gloria Arroyo declared a state of emergency for the area that would allow curfews and road checkpoints to be imposed.
“No effort will be spared to bring justice to the victims and hold the perpetrators accountable to the full limit of the law,” Arroyo said on national television. National police spokesman Chief Superintendent Leonardo Espina told reporters in Manila that 24 bodies had been recovered on Tuesday, on top of 22 that had been found on Monday.
Regional police commander Chief Superintendent Josefino Cataluna described a grisly search operation along an unpaved road in the isolated rural village of Saniag, saying 17 bodies had been pulled from just one grave.
Political violence is common in the Philippines - where more than one million unlicensed guns flow freely among a population of 92 million - and dozens of people are murdered each election season.
But the scale of Monday’s massacre, as well as the targeting of journalists with no links to the clan war, has shocked and deeply angered the country, as well as governments and rights groups around the world.
“The government must without question bring those responsible for this massacre to justice,” said Nonoy Espina, Vice-President of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, amid reports at least 12 reporters died.
The European Union condemned the killings as “barbaric” while the Press Emblem Campaign (PEC), set up to push for an international treaty to protect journalists, condemned the massacre.