The Philippine president blamed “foreign terrorists” for a bomb blast that killed four people yesterday, wounded dozens of other Catholic worshipers in the south and sparked a security alarm, including in the capital, Manila, where state forces were put on alert.
The explosion of the suspected bomb, which police said was made from a mortar round, hit students and teachers who attended a Mass in a gymnasium at Mindanao State University in Marawi, said Taha Mandangan, the security chief of the state-run campus.
Dozens of students and teachers dashed out of the gym and the wounded were taken to hospitals.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Regional military commander Major General Gabriel Viray III said that four people were killed by the explosion, including three women, and 50 others were brought to two hospitals for treatment.
Six of the wounded were fighting for their lives in a hospital, Lanao del Sur Governor Mamintal Adiong Jr said.
“I condemn in the strongest possible terms the senseless and most heinous acts perpetrated by foreign terrorists upon the Mindanao State University,” Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr said in a statement. “Extremists who wield violence against the innocent will always be regarded as enemies to our society.”
Marcos did not explain why he immediately blamed foreign militants for the high-profile bombing.
Philippine Minister of Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr later told a news conference without elaborating that there was a strong indication of a “foreign element” in the bombing.
Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines General Romeo Brawner Jr said the bomb attack could be retaliation by Muslim militants for a series of battle setbacks.
“We are looking at possible angles,” Brawner said. “It could be a retaliatory attack.”
He cited the killing of 11 suspected Islamic militants in a military offensive backed by airstrikes and artillery fires on Friday near Datu Hoffer in southern Maguindanao province.
Regional police director Brigadier General Allan Nobleza said the slain militants belonged to Dawlah Islamiyah, an armed group that had aligned itself with the Islamic State group and has a presence in Lanao del Sur province.
Army troops and police cordoned off the university shortly after the bombing and began an investigation, checking security cameras for any indication of who might have been responsible for the attack. Security checkpoints were set up around the city.
Philippine National Police Lieutenant General Emmanuel Peralta told reporters that military and police bomb experts found fragments of a 60mm mortar round at the scene of the attack.
Such explosives fashioned from mortar rounds had been used in previous attacks by Islamic militants in the country’s south.
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