2 Killed, 4 Wounded In Market Bombing In South RP

Civilians ride a motorboat to hop from one island to another in Cotabato City near Sultan Kudarat province. Two people are dead and four others wounded in a bomb attack on a market in Sultan Kudarat on Tuesday 10 Oct 2006. (Juan Magtanggol)

COTABATO CITY (Juan Magtanggol / 10 Oct) – Two people were killed and four others wounded in a bomb attack Tuesday at a market place in the southern Philippine city of Tacurong, officials said.

The bombing came just a week after security forces arrested the Indonesian wife - Istiada Oemar Sovie and her two boys ages 6 and 8 – of a Jemaah Islamiya militant, Dulmatin, in Jolo island.

“We are still investigating the motive of the attack and who was behind it. Two people are dead and four more are wounded in the bombing,” Lt. Col. Julieto Ando, spokesman of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, told the Mindanao Examiner.

He said the blast occurred at around 12.30 p.m. in front of the market’s restrooms. Soldiers and policemen were tracking down two men who were seen near the restrooms minutes before the bomb, fashioned out from an 81mm mortar, was detonated.

Ando said two women were killed in the blast which injured four adults, including three women.

About 6,000 Filipino troops, backed by U.S. military intelligence, are pursuing Dulmatin and another Jemaah Islamiya militant Umar Patek, believed to be with the group of Abu Sayyaf chieftain Khadaffy Janjalani, in the southern island of Jolo.

Dulmatin’s wife said that she sneaked by boat to the southern Philippine island of Tawi-Tawi from Malaysia in August 2003 and was fetched by Azhar, a Jemaah Islamiya militant, and brought to Jolo island to join the group of the wanted terror leader and the Abu Sayyaf.

Both Dulmatin and Patek are wanted by Jakarta for the 2002 bombings of two nightclubs in the resort island of Bali, which killed 202 mostly Australian holiday-makers, including seven U.S. citizens.

The Jemaah Islamiya is also believed as behind the 2004 bombing of a Filipino ferry off Manila Bay that killed 116 people-the second-worst terrorist attack in Southeast Asia after the 2002 Bali bombs.

The group was largely blamed by Philippine authorities in a series of bombings in Manila in December 2000 that killed 22 and wounded more than 100 people. One of the bombs exploded at an open square less than a hundred meters from the U.S. Embassy.

The U.S. has offered a $10 million bounty for the capture of Dulmatin, an electronics specialist with training in al-Qa'eda camps in Afghanistan.Dulmatin fled to Mindanao soon after the August 2003 bombing of the JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta.

There, he is one of four top JI leaders—including Umar Patek, Zulkifli bin Hir and Abdul Rahman Ayub—who trained members of JI and the Abu Sayyaf group in Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) camps in the Philippines.

The MILF has denied any links with the Jemaah Islamiya.Philippine authorities previously said that as many as 31 Jemaah Islamiya militants are believed operating in the restive island of Mindanao. (Mindanao Examiner)