Philippines massacre is a terrible test for the government

AMPATUAN, Philippines — A few miles off the main highway, on a remote hilltop covered with waist-high grass, bodies lay with twisted hands reaching in the air. They had been shot point-blank.

Nearby, bodies were being laid out under banana leaves Tuesday as police — their faces covered against the stench — unearthed a mass grave containing 22 victims from Monday's ambush on an election caravan. The discovery brought the death toll to 52 — an unprecedented act of violence at the outset of the country's election season.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo declared a state of emergency in Maguindanao and a neighboring southern province, sending extra troops and police to try to impose the rule of law.

"No effort will be spared to bring justice to the victims and hold the perpetrators accountable to the full limit of the law," she said.

Few think she will be successful in the impoverished, lawless region that has been outside the central government's reach for generations, and where warlords backed by private armies go by their own rules.

Authorities ended the search for bodies Wednesday. The final death toll included 18 Filipino journalists from regional newspapers, TV and radio stations who were accompanying family members and supporters of a gubernatorial candidate out to file his nomination papers for May 2010 elections.

The deaths were "the largest single massacre of journalists ever," according to Paris-based Reporters Without Borders.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the "heinous crime committed in the context of a local election campaign" and hoped that "no effort will be spared to bring justice and to hold the perpetrators accountable," U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said at U.N. headquarters in New York.

Dozens of gunmen intercepted the caravan as it traveled on a two-lane highway that cuts across vast open tracts of land and banana groves, police said. They took some of the people to the grassy area, where the killings started.

Authorities found 24 bullet-riddled bodies sprawled on the ground next to five abandoned vehicles.

Police, aided by a backhoe, worked most of Tuesday to extricate the bodies from the mass grave. All had been shot multiple times and were dumped on top of one another. One was a pregnant woman.

Grieving relatives helped identify their loved ones before they were given the bodies, covered by banana leaves, for burial.

The gubernatorial candidate, Ismael Mangudadatu, was not in the convoy because he had received death threats. He said he met with the defense secretary, national police chief and military commanders to demand justice and the immediate arrest and prosecution of the killers of his wife, two sisters and other relatives.