A roadside bomb exploded on Tuesday as a convoy of military vehicles and media vehicles passed on a village in the southern Philippine province of Maguindanao, security officials and journalists said.
They said the blast occurred near Raja Buayan town where two armoured vehicles were escorting a truckload of soldiers pursuing the separatist rebel group called Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) blamed for the spate of terrorism in central Mindanao.
There were no reports of casualties or injuries in the blast and no individual or group claimed responsibility for the attack. But the 6th Infantry Division quickly blamed the BIFF and their sympathizers for the bombing.
Filipino journalists, who were tailing the military convoy, witnessed the powerful explosion and said they saw a black smoke billowing from the roadside just several blocks away from one of the two armoured personnel carriers escorting the troops.
“It was really powerful and from where we were, we can see a thick black smoke covered the whole highway and we are just lucky that we were behind - about 100 meters - from the military convoy,” said Mark Navales, regional chief of the Mindanao Examiner newspaper, who was with other television journalists covering the fighting in Maguindanao.
Previous attack
Just recently, a roadside bombing wounded 12 people, including a pair of television journalists, tailing a military convoy in Maguindanao’s Datu Odin Sinsuat town. Among the wounded were six soldiers and four other civilians hit by shrapnel from the blast along the town’s highway.
The journalists, Jeff Caparas and his cameraman Adrian Bulatao, both from ABC 5 television, were in a separate vehicle when the bomb explosion occurred. The bomb was reportedly planted in a parked tricycle in the village of Lower Salbu and exploded as the convoy passed.
The television network reported on its website that Bulatao was in shock, but conscious, although in pain, while Caparas is also wounded, but was on his feet.
The military also blamed the bombing to the BIFF under Ustadz Ameril Umra Kato which has been fighting security forces since January 27, a day after Filipino peace negotiators signed an accord with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front on how the country’s rebel group would lay down their weapons.
The 6th Infantry Division now said it had killed over 50 rebels and captured several enemy encampments, but Abu Misry Mama, a rebel spokesman, strongly denied the military’s claim and branded them as propaganda, although he admitted that 7 members of his group were wounded in the clashes that already displaced thousands of families in the province.
The military has recently ended its campaign against the BIFF and declared victory over the rebel group.
The BIFF broke away with the MILF in 2011 after accusing its chieftain Murad Ebrahim for abandoning their struggle for independence and betraying the MILF when he agreed to a secret meeting called by President Benigno Aquino in Japan in August 2011, saying Ebrahim corrupted the rights of the Bangsamoro people, adding the MILF chieftain should have consulted his leaders before meeting with the Filipino leader.
Kato and another senior rebel leader, Abdulla Macapaar, were both accused by Philippine authorities as behind the series of deadly attacks in Mindanao in 2008 after peace negotiators failed to sign a Muslim homeland deal because the Supreme Court declared the accord unconstitutional.
Kato suffered a stroke in 2011, but his condition remains unknown, although there were reports that a new commander – Sheik Mohidin Animbang – has taken over the command of the BIFF, whose members were mostly former fighters of the MILF and rival group Moro National Liberation Front.
Filipino journalists tailing a military convoy watch from afar a black smoke from a roadside bomb that exploded Tuesday, February 4, 2014 in Maguindanao province in southern Philippines. (Mindanao Examiner Photo - Mark Navales)
http://mindanaoexaminer.blogspot.com/2014/02/philippine-roadside-bombing-nearly-hit.html
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