Moro rebel bomber triggered Davao airport blast: RP officials
Moro rebel bomber triggered Davao airport blast: RP officials
Jason Gutierrez, Agence France-Presse, Davao, Philippines
A young Moro separatist guerrilla carrying explosives in a backpack triggered the airport bombing in the southern Philippines which left 21 people dead, defense officials said on Thursday.
The 23-year-old Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebel was among the dead in Tuesday's blast in the city of Davao which also injured more than 150, they said.
Defense spokesman Lt. Col. Danilo Servando identified the suspect as Muntazer Sudang, 23, a resident of Kabacan town in the center of the southern Mindanao island, of which Davao is the commercial capital.
"Sudang was one of the fatalities in the Davao blast," Servando said in Manila.
"He was the bomb carrier," Servando said, adding the bomb may have "prematurely exploded."
It was not immediately clear if the suspect planned to leave the package in the airport or if he planned to die in the attack, which ripped apart a packed airport waiting lounge.
Suicide bombing is almost unheard of in the Philippines and is not known to have been used as a strategy by Muslim or communist rebel groups in the country.
The 12,500-member MILF, the country's largest separatist group waging a 25-year campaign for an Islamic state in the southern third of the mainly Roman Catholic Philippines, has denied any hand in the blast.
MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu told AFP that the government charge that a MILF bomber triggered the blast was "a total lie" and was part of a campaign to discredit the group.
The Abu Sayyaf group, also operating in the southern Philippines, had on Wednesday claimed responsibility for the blast but said the bomb had gone off earlier than intended.
The government had rejected the claim by the Abu Sayyaf, classified as a terrorist group by Washington for its alleged links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
The MILF has been previously linked to al-Qaeda's Southeast Asian chapter, Jamaah Islamiyah (JI), accused of staging the bomb attack on the Indonesian island of Bali in October last year that killed 202 people.
The government had detained 20 people following the Davao blast, including five they suspected of having links to Sudang, who allegedly carried a powerful pipe bomb typically used by Moro rebels.
Rodrigo Duterte, mayor of Davao and crisis manager of the blast, said that in the course of the arrests, government forces recovered "half a sack of explosives," adding that it was "enough to blow all of us to kingdom come."
Forensics experts from the United States and Australia are to help Filipino authorities in the investigations, President Gloria Arroyo said on Thursday.
Evidence of the Davao bomber's identity were obtained from the blast site, officials said. His relatives were arrested and questioned when they went to a hospital morgue to claim his remains.
Investigators then cross-checked on a roster of MILF recruits recovered by a military unit following a clash in the southern town of Kabacan with a MILF unit sometime in 2000, defense department records showed.
Sundang had apparently joined the MILF soon after he turned 16.
Police sources in Davao named Mastura Gumawan, the senior leader of the MILF forces in the Cotabato region that includes Kabacan town, as the man who "directed" the Davao attack.
The MILF's Davao commander, Ibrahim Lais, was against the plot, the sources added.
The Davao bombing followed weeks of intense clashes in Mindanao between government forces and the MILF which left about 200 dead, most of them MILF rebels.
In fresh fighting near Balo-i town in southern Lanao del Norte province, on Thursday, MILF rebels said they had captured seven government soldiers.
The Davao blast has sent tremors across the financial markets in the Philippines and abroad, with the Philippine peso closing at a 25-month low of 54.840 against the dollar early Thursday from its close of 54.750 on Wednesday.