[AFP] The Philippine government blamed Islamic insurgents Friday for bombings that left 52 people wounded during the country's Christmas holidays.
A bomb blast ripped through boxing fans watching a bout in the central town of Hilongos on late Wednesday, while six people were injured in a roadside bomb attack on the southern island of Mindanao the same night.
Police said 13 people were also wounded in another explosion outside a Catholic church during Christmas Eve mass in Mindanao on Saturday.
Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said, "It looks like they are employing diversionary tactics elsewhere to ease military pressure on them."
Two small Mindanao-based militant groups, the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters and the Maute group, are suspected of involvement in the bomb attacks after they formed a tactical alliance and began sharing bomb-making technology, according to Lorenzada.
Philippine president Duterte has been pursuing peace talks with the MILF, while ordering a crackdown on Mindanao militant factions that spurned his peace drive.
The BIFF is a breakaway faction from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front which has been observing a ceasefire with the government. Like the Maute group, which has fought skirmishes with Phillipine forces in another area of Mindanao this year, the BIFF has been seen using the black flags associated with Daesh. The third group targeted in the military crackdown is the Abu Sayyaf.
In November, Philippine police detained two suspected Maute militants who allegedly planted an improvised explosive device near the U.S. embassy in Manila. Earlier that month, the military blamed the group for a roadside bomb that wounded seven of Duterte's military bodyguards ahead of his visit to the region.
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[Anadolu Agency] A bombing and a shooting have shaken southern Thailand, a week after the military government revealed new plans to counteract the insurgency in the region.
An investigator at the Rueso district police station in Narathiwat said that a bomb exploded Thursday while a police patrol car passed on a local road. Police Captain Marut Nikolsi said, "The remote-controlled bomb was buried on the roadside. The car was damaged by shrapnel, but no one was injured."
Another incident Thursday evening left one person wounded in Sungai Padi district in the same province.
Police Sub-Lieutenant Kittisak Iat-het said, "An indeterminate number of people ambushed and shot at the car of a 51-year-old villager who was driving along a local road."
In a plan revealed last week, the junta called for more security and the promotion of investment in rural communities in the three southernmost provinces in order to combat the influence of militants. A handout detailing the plans said, "We envision the completion of 'model villages' throughout the region to increase social security for citizens."
Such villages are heavily subsidized by the government to provide jobs and security for local residents. They are singled out by the military for their strategic and geographical importance, along with a high risk of recruitment.
A recent report by Brussels-based think tank International Crisis Group has claimed that peace negotiations have "foundered" because both sides "prefer hostilities to compromise."
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Anadolu Agency] A bombing and a shooting have shaken southern Thailand, a week after the military government revealed new plans to counteract the insurgency in the region.
