MANILA, May 19 (Reuters) - Philippine soldiers failed to stop a car rigged with bombs as it entered the country's main army base in capital Manila during an anti-terror drill on Monday.

"There could have been a big explosion, a big embarrassment," Colonel Ireneo Espino, commander of Camp Aguinaldo, told reporters. "I am sure I would have been reassigned somewhere else after that."

Two unmarked cars, one of them rigged with high explosives, were sent to the camp on Manila's main highway, to test the preparedness of security forces against potential car bomb attacks in the capital.

Soldiers guarding the camp's main gates failed to stop the cars as they sped through the gates and stopped about a hundred metres inside.

"Their reaction was a bit delayed," Espino said, noting that an army base on the troubled southern island of Mindanao had been attacked by a group of Muslim militants, including two Egyptians, in the mid-1990s.

"I don't want such incidents happening here," he said, adding more anti-terror drills would be carried out. (Reporting by Manny Mogato; Editing by Carmel Crimmins and Valerie Lee)

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