Was deadly Cotabato City bombing a revenge plot?

COTABATO CITY
-- Security officials are not discounting a vendetta angle in
Monday's bombing here, a possible retaliation for the deaths of four Islamic
militants, two of them foreigners, in a military operation nine days before.

A son of the
ethnic Maguindanaon Salahuddin Hassan named Salamuddin was reportedly killed
along with Indonesian Abdulrahid Ruhmisanti and the Singaporean Abu Hud Zain in
a covert operation last December 22 in
Barangay Tatak in the marshy center of Mamasapano, Rajah Buayan and S.K.
Pendatun towns in Maguindanao.

The bomb-maker
Hassan is the alleged producer of the home-made explosives used in the August
28, 2018 bombing in Isulan, Sultan Kudarat and, subsequently, in another spot
in the same municipality four days later, killing a total of five people and
hurting more than 50 others.

Hassan’s
brother, Mohammad, was also killed in the encounter in Barangay Tatak,
according to senior members of the local peace and order councils in the three
adjoining Maguindanao towns.

The incident
in Barangay Tatak resulted in the death of Army Sgt. Melanio Diaz, one of the
agents of the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces involved in the
operation, carried out with the help of the 6th Infantry Division in
Maguindanao.

Local
officials have earlier urged Malacañang to award the plainclothes military
agents, among them a captain in the Philippine Marine Corps, with medals of
valor for having neutralized the four terrorists.

The slain
terrorists belonged to the Islamic State-inspired Muhajireen Wal-Ansar, also
known as the Maguindanao Dawlah Islamiya, or the third faction in the central
Mindanao-based Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters.

Major Gen.
Cirilito Sobejana of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division said Thursday it could be
possible that the December 31 bombing near the entrance to the Southseas Mall
here that killed two people and wounded 37 others was perpetrated by companions
of the slain terrorists.

The Marine
captain who led the operation in Barangay Tatak, launched after ISAFP and the
6th ID learned of the group’s plot to smuggle powerful improvised explosive
devices to key cities in Mindanao, was wounded in the gunfight with Hassan and
his men.

The officer
was confined for several days in the Camp Siongco Hospital inside Camp Siongco
in Datu Odin Sinsuat town in Maguindanao, where the command center of the
Army’s 6th Infantry Division in located.

Officials of
the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which has a current peace process with
Malacañang, have confirmed that the third BIFF faction, led by the radical
cleric Esmael Abdulmalik, alias Abu Toraife, is coddling Asian and Middle
Eastern terrorists in the 220,000-hectare Liguasan Delta in central Mindanao.

Sobejana and
officials of the Police Regional Office-12, which has jurisdiction over
Cotabato City, have urged the public to remain calm and refrain from posting on
Facebook unfounded theories on Monday’s IED attack here.

Sobejana said
units of 6th ID will continue the hunt for Hassan and his cohorts.

Hassan, Bashir
Ungab, Nasser Adil and Ansari Yunos were originally pioneer loyal followers of
BIFF founder Ustadz Ameril Ombra Kato, but together broke away in late 2016 and
formed their own group that boasts of loyalty to the Islamic State.

They also
named then Kato's most trusted lieutenant, the fiery radical Islamic preacher
Abdulmalik, more popular as Toraife, as their emir and declared the black IS
flag as their revolutionary banner.

The two other
BIFF factions, one led by Imam Bongos and the other by Imam Karialan, also both
eloquent in espousing hatred to non-Muslims, have persistently been denying
links with Toraife’s group.

Sobejana said
efforts to determine if the bombing here last Monday was meant to avenge the
deaths of Hassan's four henchmen are still underway.

Let us
patiently wait for the outcome of the joint police-military investigation on
the incident. Let us not spread wild speculations about it while the process is
still underway, Sobejana said.