Zamboanga City, Philippines  - Police recovered six homemade bombs placed in different areas in a southern Philippine city, a police official said Tuesday.

The improvised explosive devices were defused after they were recovered Monday in Zamboanga City, 875 kilometres south of Manila, according to city police chief Senior Superintendent Mario Yanga.

Yanga said two bombs were recovered outside the residence of Congressman Mujiv Hataman while four more bombs were recovered near his office.

Manila  - Philippine merchandise exports contracted 41 per cent in January as demand slowed down amid the global financial crisis, the government said Tuesday.

The National Statistic Offices said export receipts in January were only 2.49 billion dollars, compared to 4.23 billion dollars the same month in 2008, and down from from
2.67 billion dollars in December.

Cotabato City, Philippines  - A leftist activist was killed by unidentified gunmen in a southern Philippine city, a police report said Tuesday.

Eleazar Billanes, a spokesman for the leftist South Cotabato People's Alliance, was shot on Monday by motorcycle-riding gunmen in Koronadal City in South Cotabato province, 960 kilometres south of Manila.

He received several gunshot wounds and was killed instantly as he walked home from a public market, the report said.

Manila - Two Chinese tourists drowned while scuba diving in the central Philippines, police said Monday.

The victims - Pang Chi Lung, 44, and Cheung Joanne Wai, 28 - were with four other tourists during the dive off Olango Island, Cebu province, 585 kilometres south of Manila, on Sunday.

But Pang and Cheung failed to surface after 30 minutes, a police report said.

The other divers went back for the two missing tourists, but failed to locate them.

Manila  - Government troops arrested a suspected Muslim militant after an armed skirmish in the southern Philippines, a regional military commander said Monday.

Major General Reynaldo Mapagu said the suspect, Giovanni de Ocampo, is a former communist rebel who recently joined a unit of the regional terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) in the Philippines.

Manila  - Four children were killed Monday when fire gutted their home south of the Philippine capital, a provincial police chief said.

Senior Superintendent Jesus Gatchalian said the victims, aged 5 to 9, were sleeping when the fire broke out in their house in Padre Garcia town in Batangas province, 90 kilometres south of Manila.

Gatchalian said the father, who survived the accident, was not able to save the children because the flames spread swiftly. The mother was not at the house at the time of the accident.