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ZAMBOANGA CITY: Military intercepted a homemade bomb
and detained two men allegedly transporting the explosive in Shariff
Kabunsuan in Mindanao, officials said.
Soldiers discovered the bomb
after stopping a commuter van at a checkpoint in the village of
Maker in Datu Odin Sinsuat town before dawn Wednesday.
Passengers were questioned on
suspicions that they were members of some terrorist group before
they were brought to the local police for further interrogation.
“We still don’t know anything about the suspects or their
backgrounds, as the investigation is still ongoing,” Col. Julieto
Ando, spokesman for the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, told The
Manila Times.
He said soldiers recovered two
kilos of TNT explosives, a 60mm mortar rocket, electronic blasting
caps and wires, galvanized iron nails and a cellular phone that
could be used as a detonator.
Ando said civilian informants
provided intelligence that led to the arrest of the suspects,
including the van’s driver and one of the passengers. He did not
say how many passengers were onboard the van or whether other
weapons were recovered from the vehicle.
The military has repeatedly
warned that terrorists may launch a series of attacks in retaliation
to the killing of a purported Jemaah Islamiya bomber.
Military officials said that
soldiers recovered the body of a man thought to be Dulmatin in a
remote village in Tawi-Tawi province last month.
But a DNA test by the Philippine
National Police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation has yet to
confirm whether the body was really that of Dulmatin, one of those
who masterminded the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people,
including 88 Australians, 25 Britons and seven US citizens.
Indonesian police said Dulmatin,
half-Javanese and half-Arabic, was the man who mixed and assembled
the 500kg bomb that destroyed the Sari Club during the Bali attack.
Dulmatin’s assassination would
be the biggest breakthrough in the hunt for the remaining Bali
bombers these past years. Another Bali bomber, Umar Patek, is
believed to be hiding in Sulu or Tawi-Tawi province under the
protection of the local Abu Sayyaf group.
Philippine authorities last month
also claimed to have uncovered a plot by the Jemaah Islamiya, the
Abu Sayyaf, the New People’s Army and the Moro Islamic Liberation
Front to assassinate President Gloria Arroyo and other high
government officials.
--Al Jacinto
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