COTABATO CITY – A powerful bomb explosion late Sunday injured more than a dozen people in an attack by suspected rebels in the southern Philippines, officials said.
Officials said many of those injured in the blast in downtown Kabakan in North Cotabato were reportedly in serious condition. The improvised explosive, fashioned out from a mortar bomb, went off outside a public school. Soldiers and policemen who responded to the attack have recovered two more explosives nearby.
“The IED exploded near the gate of Kabacan Central Pilot School. Two more bombs were discovered at an overpass near the school and were immediately disrupted by in the area,” Captain Jo Ann Petinglay, of the 6th Infantry Division’s Public Affairs Office, told the regional newspaper Mindanao Examiner.
No individual or group has claimed responsibility for the violence, but police and military were looking into the involvement of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, who recently pledged allegiance to the jihadist group ISIS or the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
“We are suspecting the BIFF as the culprit,” Petinglay said.
The bombing occurred just a day after an improvise explosive also went off near an army post in the village of Banayal in North Cotabato’s Tulunan town.
There were no reports of casualties, but the attack sent a chilling warning that even in the presence of troops in the village, rebels can easily sneak and stage attacks undetected by security forces.
The bomb was assembled from a 60mm mortar and rigged to a detonator. The 39th Infantry Battalion maintains several posts in the area.
Just recently, a mortar attack also killed an eight-year girl and an adult man and injured three more people in nearby Pikit town where security forces are battling the BIFF. The 6th Infantry Division quickly blamed the attack on the BIFF, but the rebel group pointed to the soldiers as behind the shelling. (Mindanao Examiner. With a report from Ely Dumaboc)
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