MAGUINDANAO (Mindanao Examiner / 08 May) – At least three dozen people were killed and wounded in bomb attack late Tuesday afternoon in the southern Philippines, officials said.
Officials said as many as ten people were killed and over two dozens more wounded in the blast at a packed billiard hall in Sultan Kudarat's Tacurong City.
“Initial reports said as many as ten people are killed in the bomb explosion,” a regional army spokesman, Lt. Col. Julieto Ando, told the independent regional newspaper, the Mindanao Examiner.
He said authorities were investigating the motive of the attack.
Maj. Gen. Raymundo Ferrer, commander of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said more soldiers were sent to secure the area.
“More than two dozens are injured in the explosion and according to our reports, the blast was from an improvised explosive device left at the billiard hall,” he said in a separate interview.
Ferrer said army explosive experts were sifting through debris to determine what type of bomb was used in the attack. Other reports suggested the bomb was assembled from a mortar rocket and probably rigged to an electronic timer.
No individual or group claimed responsibility for the blast, but suspicion fell heavily on the Indonesian terror group, Jemaah Islamiya.
“The Jemaah Islamiya could be behind the attack. It has the signature of the Jemaah Islamiya,” Ferrer said without further elaborating.
The attack occurred despite a tight police security in Tacurong City. Fresh military reports said terrorists may strike in the cities of Koronadal, General Santos, Kidapawan and Cotabato, all in the southern Philippines.
Just Sunday, soldiers detonated a homemade bomb near a police post in Tacurong after policemen discovered a package containing C4 explosive and steel pellets.
The latest attack came just a week after the United States, Canada and Australia warned their citizens against traveling to Mindanao island and the Sulu Archipelago in the southern Philippines because of heightened terror activities.
Security forces are battling members of the al-Qaeda affiliate Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiya militants and Moro National Liberation Front rebels.
A grenade attack last month in North Cotabato’s Pikit town injured three people working for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Another bomb attack in Midsayap town also in North Cotabato also injured one civilian. A man was also killed after a bomb he was transporting exploded in Cotabato City in Maguindanao province near North Cotabato.
Abu Sayyaf militants also beheaded six construction workers and a fisherman they kidnapped in Parang town in Jolo island on April 15 after their employer, Jolo governor Benjamin Loong rejected a ransom demand. (Juan Magtanggol)
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