COTABATO CITY (Mindanao Examiner / Feb. 1, 2014) – A roadside bombing on Saturday wounded 12 people, including two television journalists on a military in the southern Philippines where security forces are battling Moro rebels.
Among the wounded were six soldiers and four other civilians hit by shrapnel from the blast along the highway of Datu Odin Sinsuat town in Maguindanao, one of five provinces under the Muslim autonomous region.
The journalists, Jeff Caparas and his cameraman Adrian Bulatao, both from ABC 5 television, were in a separate vehicle when the bomb explosion occurred. The bomb was reportedly planted in a parked tricycle in the village of Lower Salbu and exploded as the convoy passed.
The television network reported on its website that Bulatao was in shock, but conscious, although in pain, while Caparas is also wounded, but was on his feet.
No individual or group claimed responsibility for the blast, but the military was quick to blame the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters under Ustadz Ameril Umra Kato, which has been fighting security forces since January 27.
Kato and another senior rebel leader, Abdulla Macapaar, were both accused by Philippine authorities as behind the series of deadly attacks in Mindanao in 2008, and had been disowned by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front or MILF headed by Murad Ebrahim after they split with the rebel group with Kato forming his own called Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Movement – Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters.
The military said Kato and Macapaar had led rebel forces in attacking civilian targets after peace negotiators failed to sign a Muslim homeland deal because the Supreme Court declared the accord unconstitutional. Because of the attacks, police and military authorities have launched an operation to capture the two leaders.
Kato has repeatedly criticized Ebrahim for abandoning their struggle for independence and betraying the MILF when he agreed to a secret meeting called by President Aquino in Japan in August 2011, saying Murad corrupted the rights of the Bangsamoro people, adding the MILF chieftain should have consulted his leaders before meeting with Aquino.
Kato suffered a stroke in 2011, but his condition remains unknown, although there were reports that a new commander – Sheik Mohidin Animbang – has taken over the command of the rebel group, whose members were mostly former fighters of the MILF and rival Moro National Liberation Front.
The military offensive came a day after Filipino peace negotiators signed an accord with the MILF on how the country’s rebel group would lay down their weapons.
Journalists covering the war in Maguindanao are embedded with the military or often tailing government troops in their operations or patrol.
The 6th Infantry Division now said it had killed over 50 rebels and captured several enemy encampments, but Abu Misry Mama, a rebel spokesman, strongly denied the military’s claim and branded them as propaganda, although he admitted that 7 members of his group were wounded in the clashes that already displaced thousands of families in the province. (Mindanao Examiner)
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