ZAMBOANGA CITY (Mindanao Examiner / Apr. 8, 2013) – Philippine authorities said a homemade pipe bomb was discovered and safely disarmed outside a motorcycle store in the troubled Muslim province of Basilan.
The bomb, planted outside the Phil Motors Inc., was assembled from a metal pipe filled with explosives and rigged to a mobile phone and a battery. Police said the improvised explosive device was discovered by a villager and reported it to them.
No individual or group claimed responsibility for the foiled bombing or the motive behind it, but the province is a stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf terror group which is being blamed by police and military as behind the string of violent attacks and kidnappings in Basilan, one of five provinces under the Muslim autonomous region.
The foiled attack came at the same time that the military launched an operation to capture a key leader of the Abu Sayyaf in the province – Puruji Indama – who was tagged as behind the kidnapping of Australian national Warren Rodwell.
Rodwell, 54, was freed last month after his Filipino wife Miraflor Gutang, 28, said she paid P4 million ransom to the Abu Sayyaf in exchange for the foreigner’s life. Rodwell was kidnapped in Ipil town in Zamboanga Sibugay province on December 2011. (Mindanao Examiner)
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