Alarm clock causes bomb scare at hotel

MANILA, Philippines - A bomb scare at a hotel in front of the United States embassy in Manila was apparently caused by a housekeeper who mistook an alarm clock for a “dynamite with a timer,” an official said yesterday.

Inspector Arnold Santos, who heads the Manila Police District’s explosives and ordnance division (EOD), said their office received a call from the Bayview Hotel at around 1 p.m., an hour after the housekeeper found the “bomb” while cleaning one of the rooms on the fifth floor.

“He panicked, took the dynamite out of the room, and brought it to the back of the hotel along Alhambra street,” he said.

Members of the EOD used a “water charge” to disrupt the “bomb” as investigators went to the hotel room, checked the box that the housekeeper said held the supposed dynamite and found out it was only an alarm clock.

Two hours later, the Japanese man who occupied the hotel room returned to the hotel. He told police that he bought the clock at a nearby mall, Santos said.