ZAMBOANGA CITY – The resiliency of the city has saved the Philippines from the world’s image amid terror threats and anti-human trafficking, US Ambassador Kristie Kenney told local leaders here.
Kenney commended the resiliency of the city residents whom she described to have not cowed out by the recent bombing attack outside an air base that killed two people and injured 21 others.
Mayor Celso Lobregat said the pronouncement was made by Kenney during her visit Sunday here with US Armed Forces’ Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen.
“The resiliency of Zamboanga City has saved the Philippines many times,” Lobregat quoted Kenney as saying following a brief meeting.
According to Kenney, right after the bombing attack the city government took the lead and knew how to cope with the situation.
“Kenney said the people have showed up bringing the situation to
normalcy instead of cowering out to give moral victory to the terrorists,” Lobregat said.
Kenney also told Lobregat that the city also delisted out the Philippines from the list of countries having problems in human trafficking.
She said it was Zamboanga City who was the first to prosecute human traffickers in the Philippines.
“When Ambassador Kenney was called upon by President (George) Bush she brought first to the attention of the US president about the city’s resiliency,” Lobregat said.
Moreover, former Philippine National Police (PNP) director Gen. Arturo Lumibao, now chief of the National Counter-Terrorism Task Group, local police and military continued in consolidating their forces to pin down the terrorists behind the Thursday bombing.
“We are assessing all the information that will lead us to the real perpetrators of the bombing,” Lumibao said, after he was briefed by city police director Senior Superintendent Lurimer Detran.
Lobregat said the police have already come up with two cartographic sketches based on the accounts of different witnesses.
Lobregat said it cannot be ascertained if the two cartographic sketches are the real ones since there are two more suspects that planted the powerful bomb that destroyed the Air Materiel Wings Service and Loan Association Inc. (AMWSLAI) building just in front of Edwin Andrews Air Base in Barangay Sta. Maria.