TANAUAN ? Scores of friends and family turned out Saturday to bury the ex-policeman who this week hijacked a bus in Manila, leading to a crisis in which eight Hong Kong tourists died.

Even as the government tried to distance itself from the incident, over a hundred people gathered at Senior Inspector Rolando Mendoza's home, to remember him for his police honours and not for Monday's tragic events.

"There are so many mourners because he was a good man. You never heard about him doing anything bad," said warehouse worker Mark Torres, a family friend attending the wake in Tanauan, a small city south of Manila.

Francisco Misaba, a district watchman, said he had been assigned to manage the traffic because many people were expected to attend Mendoza's funeral mass and burial later in the day.

"There will be plenty of people attending because he had a lot of friends. Just about everyone in the district was his friend," he said.

Mendoza's family has refused to grant press interviews. But at his wake, which is being held in Mendoza's home, they put his numerous citations on display alongside many floral wreaths sent by fellow policemen.

Mendoza, a decorated police officer who had been sacked over extortion charges, took a bus-load of Hong Kong tourists hostage in Manila on Monday, demanding to be reinstated.

This led to a siege of the bus and muddled police negotiations that ended bloodily, with Mendoza and eight of the tourists shot dead.

The bungled rescue has enraged Hong Kong and embarrassed the Philippine government, which has called an investigation of the incident.

Further embarrassment came on Friday when the Chinese embassy condemned the draping of Mendoza's coffin with a Philippine flag as if he was a hero.

The Philippine government said that the flag had been placed there by Mendoza's family and that it had been later removed by a city official.

Torres said he could not explain Mendoza's violent actions, adding that he had never heard of any misdeeds committed by the former policeman.

"I don't think he went insane. He just believed what he was fighting for," he told Agence France-Presse.

"I can't really say that he was justified, because people died. But we can't say he was totally wrong, either."

"We don't understand why he did this. All we know is that he is now dead," said Misaba.