Perfect storm of bad co-ordination, tactical ineptitude

Monday night's massacre seemed to show that for a visitor to the Philippines, being taken hostage is only the second-worst experience. The worst is to be the object of a government rescue attempt.

The botched and bloody police operation left many Filipinos seething and wondering whether the country's 'elite' police units deserve the designation.

Millions of people here and around the world saw a SWAT team take more than an hour opening the doors of a bullet-riddled bus full of tourists and a heavily armed hijacker. At one point, a policeman tried smashing the door with a sledgehammer only for the hammer to slip out of his hands.

Speaking shortly after the operation, President Benigno Aquino expressed dissatisfaction. His interior secretary, Jesse Robredo, said: 'We could have done better.'

The country's record in rescue operations is spotty. In 1989 in the southern city of Davao, troops stormed a prison whose inmates had seized five visiting foreign missionaries. The assault killed all the hostage takers and their hostages. In 2002, an operation to free three hostages held by the terrorist group Abu Sayyaf resulted in the death of two of the hostages and the escape of their captors.

On Monday evening, the heavy downpour in Manila seemed redundant in what turned out to be a perfect storm of bad co-ordination, poor control and tactical ineptitude. Despite deciding on a policy that Robredo called 'low-key engagement', and after spending most of the day assuring the public the safety of the hostages was paramount, officers let the situation suddenly deteriorate.

Authorities waited more than eight hours, sacrificing daylight, before mounting a rescue attempt in the darkness of a rainy night. The decision to attack may have been made hastily, but the actual operation was conducted in excruciating slow motion. Although one report said the SWAT team had practised assaulting an identical bus hours before, when it came to breaching the actual vehicle the policemen were unable to get inside for a painfully long time. According to Metro Manila police chief Leocadio Santiago Jnr: 'We only had a sledgehammer and what we weren't expecting was the durability of the windows.' While the rescuers blundered about, the hostage-taker intermittently sprayed bullets from inside the bus.