SUICIDE BOMBER IN MUSLIM WOMAN'S GOWN DIES IN APPARENT ATTACK ON MILITARY UNIT IN PHILIPPINES
MANILA – A militant
wearing a traditional black Muslim woman’s gown was killed in a suicide bombing
attack Sunday on a military detachment in the southern Philippines that failed
to inflict any other deaths or injuries, officials said. The suicide attacker
tried but failed to enter a detachment in Sulu province’s Indanan town and died
when a bomb the militant was carrying exploded, officials said. It was the
third known suicide attack in Sulu this year.
Regional military
chief Lt. Gen. Cirilito Sobejana said the bomber failed to enter the detachment
due to tight security. The militant had long hair and wore a black Muslim gown
but a hand severed in the explosion appeared to be too large for a woman, Sobejana
said in a statement. “The suicide bomber
was … foreign looking with long hair based on the recovered mutilated head,
however, the recovered dismembered hand is similar to that of a man,” Sobejana
said.
A military spokesman
in Sulu, Lt. Col. Gerard Monfort, said by phone that troops took cover and
assumed combat positions, some behind sand bags, when the militant refused to
step away from the outpost’s gate and carried something that bulged in the
bomber’s gown. “A wary soldier yelled
at the militant to ‘Don’t enter, go away, go away’ and other soldiers who heard
him took cover and assumed combat positions,” Monfort said. “Then an explosion
killed the militant.”
The blast damaged the
detachment’s gate but did not cause any other deaths or injuries, Monfort said,
adding that there were no civilians in the rural area at the time. A device that was
apparently used to trigger the explosion was recovered from the scene, which
has been cordoned off and was being examined by bomb experts and police
investigators, Sobejana said.
It was the third known
suicide bombing this year by militants linked to the Islamic State group in
Sulu, including a deadly Jan. 27 bombing by an Indonesian militant couple in a
Roman Catholic cathedral in the predominantly Muslim province. In July, two suicide
attackers separately detonated explosives in another military encampment in
Indanan, killing the two militants. Authorities later confirmed through DNA
tests of the remains of the attackers that one was a Filipino, the first known
local militant to carry out a suicide attack.
All the suicide
attacks, including Sunday’s explosion, sparked security alarms and were blamed
by the military on the Abu Sayyaf, a small but brutal group that has been the
target of ongoing military offensives. The Abu Sayyaf has been blacklisted by
the U.S. and the Philippines as a terrorist organization.
Source: The Japan Times – 09 September 2019
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