Gunmen have opened fire outside Manila international airport, killing four people including the mayor of a town in the southern Philippines, where political violence is endemic.
Terrified men and women screamed and cried while a man, apparently fatally wounded, lay face down on the pavement outside the passenger terminal in a video clip uploaded to the local GMA television network's website.
"The mayor and his family and some security escorts were attacked," Manila airport general manager Angel Honrado told reporters on Friday, adding one of the dead was the mayor of Labangan town in the troubled southern region of Mindanao, Ukol Talumpa.
The official, his wife, other members of his family and their bodyguards were shot at by at least two men as they stepped out of the passenger terminal shortly after getting off a flight from the southern Philippines, Honrado said.
The dead included Talumpa, his wife, his 18-month-old grandson and a male aide, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima told reporters.
"I understand that was the third attempt on the life of the mayor and this time the culprits succeeded," de Lima said.
"It's extremely deplorable that even the wife, grandson and a staff (assistant) were also killed."
Honrado said he could not confirm television news reports quoting unnamed eyewitnesses as saying the two suspects were wearing police uniforms.
An airport policeman, who asked not to be named, told AFP he was on duty about 10 metres away when the mayor and his party were attacked.
"I heard gunshots so I whipped out my pistol and ran to the area. But the gunman had fled. He had an accomplice on a motorcycle," said the officer.
"People were shocked and just stood there so I could not shoot," he added.
"We tried to chase them in a police van, but got caught up in the traffic," he said, adding the gunman was wearing a police cap and a blue jacket.
Talumpa, a member of the political opposition, won a hotly contested election for mayor of Labangan in last May's elections, defeating the incumbent who is a political ally of President Benigno Aquino.
He had earlier survived a grenade attack that injured a police bodyguard on the troubled southern region of Mindanao in September last year, and also escaped an assassination attempt in Manila in 2010, provincial officials said.
A spokesman for the provincial government of Zamboanga del Sur, which includes Labangan, told reporters that Talumpa, a member of the Nationalist People's Coalition Party, had flown to Manila earlier in the day with his wife, two nephews and six other people.
In the footage obtained by GMA, which it said was taken by a bystander, spilled luggage and trolleys lay scattered on the curb on both sides of the gunned down man.
Two other people were shown crouching on the curb, while the voices of screaming men and women could be heard.
A taxi cab and four vans, all their doors open, were stopped on the driveway, with the hazard lights of one van still blinking on and off.
Police are withholding the identities of the other victims pending notification of next of kin, Honrado said.
He appealed to other passengers who witnessed the shooting to help the police identify the suspects.
