MANILA, Philippines — The public should not immediately blame the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist group for the recent deadly bombing at a security checkpoint in Lamitan City in Basilan, presidential spokesman Harry Roque Jr. said.
“We are still not verifying that this is an ISIS attack. Authorities are still investigating. It is very easy to claim credit for an attack, but we are not concluding anything yet because investigation has just started,” he said.
Roque said the public should wait for the official results of the investigation to avoid unnecessary reaction that might affect the peace and order situation as well as business confidence in the country.
The Malacañang official also lauded the arrest of a person of interest in the incident that killed 11, including the driver of the van loaded with improvised explosive device (IED).
“Authorities deserve praise for their early action leading to the arrest of one personality who may be involved in the bombing,” Roque said at a press briefing in Bukidnon yesterday.
“For now, I ask the public to cease and desist from making any speculation and let’s wait for final investigation report from law enforcement agencies,” Roque added.
Roque also echoed the statement of Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, who warned the public not to draw hasty conclusions about the bombing.
“I would not jump to any conclusions. So far we know that there has been a local cleric who has been arrested. We know that (the IED was detonated) in a vehicle and that it killed (the driver) and those manning the checkpoint,” Roque said.
Missed target
The driver who detonated the bomb may have been targeting a parade of schoolchildren and their teachers in Lamitan.
But moderate Sunni Muslims Private 1st Class Samad Jumah of the 19th Special Forces Company and Adlan Abdullah, Muid Manda and Titing Omar of the Citizens Armed Forces Geographical Unit (CAFGU) were killed in the blast, as they stopped the suspected suicide bomber at a checkpoint.
They died preventing an alleged ISIS jihadist from proceeding to downtown Lamitan to bomb a parade of no fewer than 2,000 schoolchildren and teachers commemorating national nutrition month, according to sources in the municipal governments in Basilan.
Jumah and the three CAFGUs intercepted at a checkpoint the suspect, who was driving the van loaded with explosives, fashioned from ammonium nitrate soaked in kerosene and mixed with potassium chlorate.
Local officials are certain the driver of the van was headed to Lamitan where children from different schools and their teachers had earlier converged in an open field.
“The activity proceeded successfully even as the news about the explosion in the city’s outskirts spread through the barangays and caused tension among our people,” Lamitan City Vice Mayor Roderick Furigay yesterday said.
“We have long been receiving tips on terror plots and we have informed authorities about these. We are thankful to the soldier and CAFGUs who prevented that van from getting (to) Lamitan,” Furigay added.
Text messages have been circulating since last Wednesday hinting that local members of the Abu Sayyaf, among them a certain Fathy Lijal, an ethnic Yakan, were behind the Lamitan bombing.
Barangay officials therefore urged the Western Mindanao Command (Westmincom) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) to investigate the supposed terror cell to which Lijal belongs, certain that it has benefactors abroad.
The group reportedly declared war against Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) Gov. Mujiv Hataman for building concrete roads that made their enclaves accessible to the military.
Lijal’s group is said to also oppose ARMM’s Basilan trans-central road project, now cutting through the forested hinterlands in the Sampinit complex in the middle of the island province, their last bastion.
Engineer Soler Undug, chief of the Basilan District Engineering Office who is overseeing infrastructure projects of ARMM in former Abu Sayyaf strongholds, survived four assassination attempts in recent years.
Almost 200 bandits in Basilan have surrendered in the past 24 months through the intercession of the provincial police, units of the 104th Brigade and the ARMM regional peace and order council.
Local officials also said Tuesday’s bombing was meant to stir up the impression that the Abu Sayyaf in Basilan has not been weakened by the recent surrender of its members.
The bandit group has only three remaining commanders now in Basilan: Furudji Indama, Radzmil Janatul and Jobel Abdullah.
Dozens of their followers have returned to the fold of the law, reintegrated into mainstream society by the Westmincom and different ARMM line agencies.
Janatul and Abdullah were said to have sent surrender feelers to certain officials, but are wary to bolt the Abu Sayyaf due to the standing criminal cases against them.
Abdullah’s group tried twice to kill Furigay, now on his second term as vice mayor of Lamitan, using improvised explosive devices.
Text scare
As this developed, the PNP warned the public about unverified text messages concerning an impending terror attack in Metro Manila.
PNP spokesman Senior Supt. Benigno Durana Jr. allayed fears brought by the messages, which have been spreading rumors that several shopping malls are going to be bombed by ISIS militants.
One such message said the bombing in Lamitan that killed 11 people was just a prelude to bigger attacks not only in Metro Manila but also in Cebu.
“There is no specific threat on any particular target. Therefore, the text scare being spread around is untrue and is obviously designed only to create panic,” he said in a statement.
Instead of spreading the messages, Durana said these should be discarded so as not to sow panic.
“Break the scare chain. Delete that message as soon it is received,” he said.
He likewise urged the public not to believe the statement of ISIS that it is responsible for the bombing in Lamitan.
“ISIS has been known to falsely claim responsibility for some violent attacks made by other groups as part of its propaganda to project an image of strength after their battlefield debacles and complete failure to establish their caliphates in some parts of Iraq and Syria and quite recently in Marawi City,” said Durana.
“It should not surprise us that ISIS is now claiming responsibility for this incident in Basilan,” he added.
To ease fears, the PNP has laid out target-hardening measures to deter any attempt or threat by ISIS and other groups.
Identity of bomber
The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) has yet to determine the identity of the driver who detonated the bomb in his van.
Col. Edgard Arevalo, AFP spokesman, added that in line with the continuing investigation into the bombing, the military is always around for the protection of innocent civilians.
“Whether they are foreign or local terror groups, if they pose threats to our people, if they endanger the lives of our people, the AFP will use all its available resources to crush and defeat them because terrorism has no place in our country,” Arevalo said.
Intelligence sources earlier bared that the man who drove the van was an ISIS suicide bomber from Morocco.
Another source claimed that the suicide bombing was an ISIS-initiated attack carried out with the active participation of Abu Sayyaf bandits headed by Indama.
“Our investigation is still ongoing. Let us give our probers some space for them to be able to come up with (conclusive findings),” Arevalo said while maintaining that it’s too early to say that the suicide bomber was a Moroccan.
What is clear for now, he said, is that nobody can tell the nationality of the driver, adding that he could be an unwilling participant in the attack.
The driver could have been just running an errand, he said, without him knowing that the van he was driving was rigged with powerful explosives.
Arevalo suggested that somebody could also have detonated the bomb when a bigger bombing plot in Lamitan had been compromised after the explosive-laden van was flagged down at a checkpoint. – With John Unson, Emmanuel Tupas, Jaime Laude