Sources: Anti-Mangudadatu rebels meeting with bomber

CAMP SIONGCO, Maguindanao ,Philippines  – Foreign-trained bomber Basit Usman has reportedly been seen meeting in the past three days with rebel commanders hostile to Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu.

The meetings came following hostilities early this week in Barangay Tenuk, Mangudadatu town that resulted in the deaths of eight of the governor’s followers, most of them his relatives.

Local officials, among them Muslim clerics, have informed the police and military that Usman, implicated in more than a dozen explosions in Central Mindanao from 2004 to 2008, could be planning to launch bombings to intimidate the Mangudadatus and force them to stop a road project that would reach the rebels’ enclaves.

There have been three roadside bombings in Buluan, Mangudadatu’s hometown, in recent months, where improvised explosives went off as buses full of passengers were passing by, injuring at least five people.

Intelligence sources said Usman met with a group hostile to the Mangudadatu family twice this week, but could not confirm if the bomb expert and his companions were indeed planning attacks in Buluan, Mangudadatu, and Pandag towns, where Mangudadatu wields political control.

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), through its spokesman, Eid Kabalu, earlier said it is not hostile to the Mangudadatu family.

Kabalu said efforts are, in fact, underway to peacefully resolve the territorial disputes between the governor’s followers and MILF forces involved in the recent hostilities in Mangudadatu town.

Sources in the provincial peace and order council said the two groups are now observing a fragile “ceasefire” to defuse tension in the affected areas.

Rebels have reportedly been opposing a road project being implemented by Mangudadatu that would connect Buluan to Sultan Kudarat’s Lutayan town, hometown of his uncle, Datu Pax, former governor of Sultan Kudarat.

The social welfare department of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, led by Executive Secretary Naguib Sinarimbo, distributed yesterday relief goods to some 500 families displaced by the hostilities and now housed in schools far from Barangay Tenuk.

Sinarimbo said more policemen have been deployed in Buluan, Mangudadatu and Pandag town to help the Army’s 6th Infantry Division prevent any fresh hostilities there.