Twelve dead and dozens wounded after separate attacks in Philippine's south
Philippines, Jun 29, 2009
Numerous casualties in the southern Philippines were a result of several security incidents over the weekend. On Saturday (June 27), Abu Sayyaf gunmen were suspected of shooting two soldiers as they walked off a school construction site in Tipo Tipo township on the predominantly Muslim southern island of Basilan to purchase cigarettes, the Associated Press (AP) reported. The two soldiers, who were on the island to help repair damaged schools, were shot dead, military spokesman Col. Romeo Brawner said. Philippine police have dispatched 226 police commandos to Basilan to heighten security there and hunt for the attackers, the Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported. Another explosion on Saturday in Tacurong city in Sultan Kudarat province wounded nine people, the military said. According to Lt. Col. Jonathan Ponce, spokesman for the army's 6th Infantry Division, the improvised bomb was set in a trash can at the bus terminal in the province. Although no group has claimed responsibility for the incident, Ponce has blamed the "special operations group" of the MILF for the attack, the AP noted. The next day on Sunday (June 28) on the island of Basilan, seven policemen traveling in a government vehicle were killed after being ambushed by a hundred Muslim gunmen in the town of Sumisip, according to police spokesman Superintendent Danilo Bacas. According to the AFP, a civilian guiding the police was wounded in the attack. The perpetrators have not yet been identified, but may have been from either the Abu Sayyaf rebel group or the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) separatist group, Salik Macapantar, Basilan police commander Senior Superintendent said. Bacas believes that MILF members were likely responsible for Sunday's ambush, the AFP reported. When asked about the attacks, Eid Kabalu, MILF spokesman, said the rebels' leaders will check whether their forces were involved in the attacks as their forces on the ground have autonomy. The weekend attacks were both in Basilan, known as a stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf, a group intelligence agencies have linked to al-Qaeda and have been blamed for the worst terror attacks in the Philippines' history. Also known to have kidnapped many Filipino nationals and foreigners, and continue to detain an Italian Red Cross worker they kidnapped in January. Violence continued on Monday (June 28) on the southern island of Mindanao, when a homemade bomb planted outside a coffee shop in the Datu Saudi Ampatuan township in Maguindanao province exploded prematurely and reportedly killed three people and wounded 15, the military and witnesses told the AFP. One of the victims was a would-be attacker. Both the AFP and AP suspect the MILF to be behind the attack, however, the group has denied responsibility. The MILF has been suspected in both bombings in the region that occurred in the last three days, but Kabalu has dismissed all allegations. Following Ponce's accusation that the MILF were behind Saturday's bus terminal blast, Kabalu was quoted by the AP as saying, "Even the typhoons are being blamed on us. Everything in his mind is pure counterinsurgency." Although the MILF has launched a string of raids on Christian settler communities across Mindanao that has taken dozens of civilian lives and displaced more than half a million people, according to aid agencies, not all bomb attacks in the southern Philippines have been conducted by the guerillas, the AP reported. The MILF is the largest Muslim rebel group fighting for an autonomous Muslim homeland in the southern Philippines. Thousands were killed in decades of fighting between the rebels and the government before 2003, when the two sides signed a ceasefire to facilitate peace talks. The truce largely held until August, when the Supreme Court stopped the signing of an agreement that was expected to create the homeland and angry break-away factions of the MILF began occupying Christian towns on western Mindanao island.
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