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Southeast Asia

Bus bomb injures 2 in southern Philippines

2022-05-29

[BenarNews] An explosion believed to be caused by an improvised bomb destroyed a passenger bus in the southern Philippines on Thursday, injuring two passengers, police and military officials said.

The vehicle, owned by the Yellow Bus Line Inc., was on a busy highway in Koronadal city when the device went off at noon, they said. A few minutes later, a second bomb went kaboom! in a vacant lot near a bus station in Tacurong city, but did not cause any injuries.

"There was no threat received by the bus firm. Our experts are investigating the incident," Koronadal Mayor Eliordo Ogena said, adding that the two passengers suffered non-life threatening injuries.

Maj. Andrew Linao, public information officer for the regional military command, said the earth-shattering kaboom was caused by an "improvised bomb."

"There’s a directive to all units to intensify checkpoint operations and intelligence monitoring," he said.

No one immediately grabbed credit for the bombings, but members of Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters
...a MILF splinter group aligned with the Islamic State...
(BIFF), a bully boy group that has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State

...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
, have carried out similar attacks.

The bombings Thursday happened hours after the Philippine military confirmed that a top BIFF leader, Abu Turaife, and other fighters were maimed during an air assault on their encampment in Maguindanao earlier this week. The offensive left two gunnies dead and hundreds of families displaced.

Turaife is one of the hardcore leaders of the BIFF, a splinter group of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which signed a peace deal with Manila in 2014 and controls a Moslem autonomous area in the south.

On Monday, the military launched air and ground assaults against Turaife and his men in Datu Salibo town in Maguindanao, displacing more than 1,000 residents.

Acting regional military commander Brig. Gen. Eduardo Gubat said Turaife was believed to have been injured during the assaults. Reports gathered by intelligence sources on the ground said he had retreated into a marshland area controlled by the BIFF.

"There were 17 gunnies including Turaife who were maimed," Gubat told news hounds.

Officials have blamed gunnies linked to the group for carrying out two roadside kaboomings in January 2021 that killed three and injured dozens of people.

More recently, at least six people were maimed in April when a homemade bomb went kaboom! aboard a passenger bus in the Parang town. Three months earlier, a 5-year-old boy was killed and six others, including his two younger siblings, were maimed in a similar attack in Aleosan town.

In both cases, IS-linked gunnies were blamed.

Posted by:trailing wife

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