BASILAN – Four army soldiers were wounded in a roadside bombing on Monday in the restive province of Basilan in the Muslim autonomous region in southern Philippines.
Security officials said the soldiers, all members of the 14th Scout Ranger Company, were patrolling the village called Sabong in Lamitan City when the bomb went off.
“They were conducting foot patrol in Barangay Sabong when the improvised explosive went off,” said army Major Filemon Tan, a spokesman for the Western Mindanao Command.
He said the injured soldiers – whose identities were not immediately known – were evacuated to a military hospital in Zamboanga City.
No individual or group claimed responsibility for the attack, but the province is a major stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf group which pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
Just recently, suspected Abu Sayyaf rebels hijacked a Vietnamese cargo ship, MV Royal 16, and shot and wounded one of its crewmen and abducted its captain and 5 other sailors. It is still holding over a dozen Malaysian and Indonesian sailors, including a German yachter kidnapped in Sabah in Malaysia.
President Duterte has warned that he will suspend the writ of habeas corpus if lawlessness continues in the troubled region. He said security forces are trying to defeat rebellion in the South. (With a report from Ely Dumaboc)
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