Civilians, police and military authorities prevented what could have been a bloody Holy Week here with the recovery of an improvised explosive device Tuesday, police said today.
Supt. Junny Buenacosa,
Bomb experts said the IED was fashioned from a 60 mm mortar attached to an old cellular phone and placed in a cardboard box. It was discovered by two passengers who noticed of the unattended box inside the bus that plies the Tacurong City-Cagayan de Oro City route.
The unidentified bus conductor took the box and threw it to a vacant lot near the bus terminal and alerted the police.
Buenacosa said the planting of the IED could be the handiwork of extortion gangs preying on public buses just like in the past.
No one has claimed responsibility for the bombing attempt.
Buenacosa lauded the pubic for its active participation in preventing violence in public transport systems in
The bus firm had been subjected to various bomb attacks in the bus after its owners rejected extortion demand from armed groups.
http://www.pna.gov.ph/index.php?idn=2&sid=&nid=2&rid=636173
In the past, the al-Khobar group had a reputation for extortion and bombings of bus companies in the Southern Philippines. The group was believed to have been spawned by the MILF to help fund the Moro group's operations. The clandestine nature of al-Khobar gave the MILF enough disassociation for plausible deniability for all actions of al-Khobar's actions. Al-Khobar's bombers were said to have been trained by Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) bomb making technicians.
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