Lamitan City council honors security personnel killed in blast

BASILAN, Philippines — Local officials have commended security personnel killed on July 31 preventing a bomb-laden van from getting through to Lamitan City.

Lamitan City Vice Mayor Roderick Furigay said Monday the Sangguniang Panglungsod resolution was passed on August 1, a day after the blast.

Furigay presides over the Lamitan City council.

PFC Samad Jumah of the Army's 19th Special Forces Company and companions Adlan Abdullah, Muid Manda, Titing Omar and Herminio Gapo of the Citizens Armed Forces Geographical Unit were killed when the explosives in the van they held near their roadside checkpoint in the outskirts of Lamitan City were set off by its driver, who also perished in the blast.

Jumah, Abdullah, Manda and Omar were moderate Muslims who supported the civil-military programs in Basilan of the Western Mindanao Command.

“The SP resolution is not even enough to express our gratitude to them whose presence of mind foiled the plot to bring that vehicle in the city proper of Lamitan. They were killed in the line of duty. Their heroism will never be forgotten,” Furigay told The STAR on Monday morning.

Police probers and Army intelligence officials believe those who planned the bombing knew of the parade by thousands of schoolchildren and teachers in the streets of Lamitan City in the morning of July 31.

Furigay, Basilan Gov. Jim Salliman and Gov. Mujiv Hataman of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao have condemned the bombing and have separately offered cash incentives for informants who can help identify its plotters.

The local government unit of Lamitan City released last week cash assistance to the families of Jumah and the slain CAFGU personnel.

Furigay said their provincial governor and Hataman, now on his second term as ARMM governor, also extended financial help to the dependents of the victims.

Three of the fatalities were civilians, one of them a 10-year-old child.

The bombing also injured five members of the Army's 9th Scout Ranger Company, whom President Rodrigo Duterte visited at the Westmincom hospital in Zamboanga City over the weekend.

Members of municipal peace and order councils in different towns in Basilan have blamed the Islamic State-inspired Abu Sayyaf for the deadly bomb attack.

Almost 200 Abu Sayyaf militants in Basilan have returned to the fold of law and pledged allegiance to the Philippine flag in the past 24 months through the efforts of the Westmincom, the Basilan provincial government and the ARMM regional peace and order council.

Local executives in the island province are certain the bombing plot was hatched to create the impression that the surrender of Abu Sayyaf gunmen, now being reintegrated into mainstream communities by different ARMM agencies, has not weakened the group yet.