|
JOLO: At least six people were killed and more than
40 wounded by twin bomb blasts in southern Philippines on Tuesday,
in what officials described as coordinated attacks by al Qaeda-linked
militants.
The first bomb exploded in a
commercial area on Jolo island, killing six people and wounding
around 30, police said. It was followed around two hours later by
car bomb blast next to a parked military patrol jeep in Iligan city.
The second blast wounded at least
10 people, including three soldiers, the military said.
Jolo, in the southern
Philippines, is a stronghold of Abu Sayyaf Muslim rebels and the
local anti-terror task force chief, Maj. Gen. Juancho Sabban, was
quick to point the finger at the militant group.
“This is a signature bomb
attack of the Abu Sayyaf,” he said, speaking on local radio. He
added that the bomb was hidden beneath the saddle of a motorcycle
that was parked outside a downtown hardware store.
US forces, who have been involved
in training missions in Jolo since 2003, were seen securing the
bombsite and helping to gather evidence from the rubble. One
bloodied body was seen lying on the ground as a bomb disposal robot
searched for possible secondary bombs, witnesses said.
Palace order
In Manila, President Gloria
Arroyo convened a top-level security meeting and ordered troops and
police to hunt down those behind the attacks, said Defense Secretary
Gilberto Teodoro.
She said she wanted the national
police and the military to come up with a strategy that would
prevent a repeat of the bombings in Sulu and Cotabato.
President Arroyo also placed all
security forces across the south on heightened alert, and canceled
all leave for military and police personnel.
The Abu Sayyaf has been blamed
for a string of bombings and kidnappings, most recently of three Red
Cross workers in Jolo in January. They are still holding one of
them, an Italian.
Casualties and injuries
The regional police spokesman,
Supt. Bayani Gucela, said six civilians were killed in the Jolo
blast, while at least 30 others were wounded. Police in Iligan, also
in the south, said at least 10 people were wounded there.
“The [Jolo] commercial district
area was packed with people when the explosion happened,” Sabban
said on local radio. “All our doctors and nurses are already there
in the area taking care of the victims.”
The device exploded in front of
Go Teck Leng Hardware Store along Sanchez Street in Jolo, instantly
killing Vicky Sia, 60; and Hamsiraji Hamsi, a jeepney driver from
Patikul, Sulu, said Supt. Danilo Bacas, spokesman of the Philippine
National Police in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
Bacas added that four policemen
were also injured in the blast. They were responding to complaint
about a suspicious package found near hardware store.
He said the explosive ordnance
and disposal team have evidence suggesting that the explosive device
that rocked Jolo was similar to the one used in bombing attack on
Sulu Gov. Abdusakur Tan last month.
Police, meanwhile, disarmed
another bomb, assembled from an 81mm mortar shell, near Jolo’s
Mount Carmel Catholic cathedral while a third suspicious package was
also found and safely detonated.
“We are still investigating the
motive of the attack and the type of explosive used in this attack.
But there were scattered remains of a motorcycle in the area and
confirming our suspicion that a motorcycle bomb was used in the
attack,” Chief Inspector Usman Pingay, the town’s police chief,
told The Manila Times by phone from Jolo.
Justice Undersecretary Ricardo
Blancaflor said the target of the bombing in Ilagan was a military
convoy. “The bombing in Iligan targeted the convoy,” he said in
a television interview.
Blancaflor, who also head a
government anti-terror task force, said they still do not know if
the attacks were coordinated or not. “But the effect of this is to
sow terror.”
Tuesday’s bombings came just
two days after a bomb exploded outside a Roman Catholic cathedral in
Cotabato City, also in the south.
The number of deaths in that
attack, which was blamed on the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF),
another Islamic rebel group, rose to six on Tuesday, when one of the
more than 50 people wounded died of his injuries, officials said.
President Arroyo’s senior
adviser for the south, Jesus Dureza, said the spate of bombings
appeared to be coordinated. “This is no longer isolated, but
orchestrated,” Dureza told reporters in Cotabato.
He said foreign militants from
the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) militant group had recently trained dozens
of local bombers for missions in the south.
Since January, there had been
about 56 bombings in the south, some of them targeting troops, but
most of them killing or maiming civilians, Dureza added.
Sabban said it was not clear
whether the Abu Sayyaf attack in Jolo was linked with the MILF
attack, although both groups were known to have helped each other in
the past.
The MILF has also admitted to
training with the JI in the past, and military intelligence
officials have said dozens of foreign militants remain in the south.
The Abu Sayyaf has been on the
run from a military offensive launched after they kidnapped Italian
aid worker Eugenio Vagni in January. A Filipina and a Swiss
colleague abducted with Vagni were separately freed in April.
It is thought that Vagni is being
held hostage in the dense jungles of Jolo, and the 62-year-old has
been in poor health, according to the government.
AFP, Julmunir I. Jannaral And
Al Jacinto
|
