Duterte was in Davao on Friday and went straight into meetings with security chiefs following the blast, according to his aides.
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Armando Morales, a 50-year-old masseur, said the explosion threw him off his chair, adding the blast had an upward force and emitted smoke but no fireball which could have killed more people.
There are several Muslim outlaw groups in that area, including separatist guerrillas but the Abu Sayyaf are based elsewhere, in the southern islands of Jolo and Basilan.
“Right now, we can not yet give definite answer to as to who is behind this as we are also trying to determine what really exploded”, said Paolo Dutertge on the city government’s Facebook page.
The mayor urged people to still visit Davao City, which has seen a boom in local and foreign visitors following the victory of Duterte in the May 9 elections.
Davao is the hometown of the current president Rodrigo Duterte: 14 people died in the attack, at least 60 were wounded. Abu Rami, a spokesperson for the extremist group warned of more attacks in retaliation against the military, after it launched an offensive against the group, following its killing of 15 soldiers.
The attack occurred while Duterte was in Davao, located some 980 kilometers away from the capital Manila.
A spokesman for the militant group Abu Sayyaf claimed responsibility soon after the attack, but the authorities initially said they were considering the possibility that drug syndicates were behind it.
The city is part of the southern region of Mindanao, where Islamic militants have for decades fought a separatist insurgency that has claimed more than 120,000 lives.
The bombing is the first violent challenge for President Duterte’s administration.
Police are seeking two other “persons of interest”, both women.
He further said that the AFP, by virtue of the declaration of a “state of lawlessness” in Mindanao and the rest of the country by the Commander-in-Chief, President Rodrigo Duterte, responds to the call and is prepared to undertake the tasks to ensure public safety.
After the bombing, Duterte declared a national “state of lawlessness”, which his security adviser said gave the military extra powers to conduct law enforcement operations normally done only by the police.
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The tough-talking Duterte, who took office as president in May pledging a brutal “War on Drugs”, has come under sharp criticism for encouraging vigilante-style killings of drug dealers and criminals.
