Mindanao in tight security watch after deadly bombing

From the Mindanao Examiner Blogspots site (Dec 10): Mindanao in tight security watch after deadly bombing



A policeman searches for bomb fragments in the bus owned by Rural Transit Mindanao in a photo passed on to the regional newspaper Mindanao Examiner.

Philippine authorities have tightened anew its security in Mindanao following a deadly bus bombing that left dozens of casualties in the restive region where troops are battling Muslim and communist insurgencies.

Maj. Christian Uy, a spokesman for the 4th Infantry Division, said 11 people were confirmed dead and 21 others wounded after an improvised explosive went off at the compartment section of the bus, owned by Rural Transit Mindanao, in the town of Maramag in Bukidnon province late Tuesday afternoon.

But other reports said as many as three dozen people were injured in the powerful blast that ripped through the bus. The explosion occurred outside the Central Mindanao University at the time many of the students were coming out of the school.

Uy said the bus was traversing the highway when the bomb exploded. He security has been tightened in northern Mindanao where the explosion occurred with soldiers and policemen deployed in bus terminals.

Maj. Ezra Balagtay, a spokesman for the Eastern Mindanao Command, said authorities were still trying to determine who was behind the bombing. “Investigators are working on this case to determine who was behind it,” he told The Manila Times.

Balagtey said the bus came from Wao in Lanao del Sur province in the Muslim autonomous region in central Mindanao and was heading to Cagayan de Oro City in northern Mindanao when the explosion occurred.

Terror groups

No individual or group claimed responsibility for the bombing, but previous bus bombings in the Muslim region were largely blamed to the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters or BIFF and the Abu Sayyaf – both recently pledged allegiance with the Sunni jihadist group ISIS which is fighting for Islamic caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

Another Filipino terrorist, Abdulbasit Usman, a former commander of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front or MILF, is also being linked by military intelligence to the bombing. Usman, who has ties with al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiya, has escaped a military operation in June in Shariff Saydona Mustapha town in Maguindanao province that resulted to the killing of his grandfather and the arrest of his wife’s uncle, including his 2 children. 

Three other women - two of them Indonesian nationals and a Filipina native of Sulu province - were also arrested and that one of them is the wife of Malaysian bomber Zulkifli bin Hir, alias Marwan, the leader of the Kumpulun Mujahidin Malaysia, who was reportedly killed in a US-backed airstrike in February 2012 in Sulu province, but his body had not been found or recovered.

Both Lanao del Sur and Maguindanao are hotbed of Muslim insurgency where BIFF, the armed wing of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Movement, founded by former Moro Islamic Liberation Front leader Ameril Umra Kato, is actively operating.

Philippine authorities have blamed the BIFF and Usman for the spate of deadly bombings in Mindanao in recent years. The MILF, which recently signed a peace deal with Manila, has previously ordered its forces to hunt down Usman after he was linked to terror attacks.

In 2010, Pakistan military reported that Usman was killed along with another foreigner and 10 al-Qaeda militants in a US drone strike in the restive South Waziristan region, but the reports turned out to be false with the Philippine military saying that the militant leader was in Mindanao.

The United States has put up a $1 million bounty for Usman’s capture under its Government Rewards Program after he was tagged by authorities as behind deadly bombings in the Philippines and has been considered by Washington as a threat to the country.

Bombings

Just last month, a bomb also exploded in another bus owned by the same company and killing three people in the same area. The bus originated from Tacurong City and was travelling to Cagayan de Oro City when the improvised explosive planted in the bus went off.

In April this, security forces also recovered an improvised explosive planted on a bus in Tacurong City. The bomb, assembled from a 60mm mortar attached to an old mobile phone and concealed in a cardboard box, was discovered by two passengers and immediately disarmed by soldiers.

But in August 2012, a bomb explosion ripped through a Rural Transit bus in Zamboanga City and wounded at least 5 people, including a boy. The powerful blast tore open the rear and the left side of the bus, which came from Pagadian City in Zamboanga del Sur province.

 
 http://www.mindanaoexaminer.net/2014/12/mindanao-in-tight-security-watch-after.html