ZAMBOANGA City (Mindanao Examiner / 07 Nov) - Government soldiers on Tuesday intercepted a truck transporting a chemical used by rebels in manufacturing homemade bombs in the southern Philippine port city of Zamboanga, a regional army spokesman said.
Major Eugene Batara said troops manning a checkpoint in the coastal village of Rio Hondo intercepted the truck loaded with 125 kilos of ammonium nitrate. "We are interrogating the truck driver. We still do not know who owns these illegal and dangerous chemical commonly used by terrorists to manufacture improvised explosive devices," he told the Mindanao Examiner.
Batara gave no other details about the capture of the chemical stashed in five bags, but the village is a notorious hideout of criminal gangs and terrorists and had been used in the past by the Abu Sayyaf as springboard for attacks against civilian targets.
Last month, authorities detained three men linked to the smuggling of 200 kilos of high-grade French-made ammonium nitrate in the port of Zamboanga. Policemen, backed by soldiers, intercepted the shipment from a Filipino ferry, MV Nickel Princely, that came from the restive island of Jolo where the Abu Sayyaf detonated a homemade bomb and wounded 3 people inside a police headquarters.
The group was also implicated in the bombing in March of a Church-run cooperative store that left nine people dead and 20 injured in downtown Jolo.In September, Zamboanga port authorities also intercepted a ferry loaded with a ton of ammonium nitrate, allegedly owned by the Abu Sayyaf.
The boat was held just minutes after it arrived from Jolo island and a ferry cargo inspector and four police escorts from Jolo were held for questioning in connection with the illegal cargo. Three more Abu Sayyaf bombings rocked the southern Philippines last month, killing at least 14 people. (Mindanao Examiner)
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