CAMP SIONGCO, Maguindanao – The military has blamed the Islamic State-inspired Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) behind the bombing of a videoke bar in the North Cotabato town of Midsayap, Sunday evening.
In a statement released on Monday, Brig. Gen. Cirilito Sobejana, Army’s 6th Infantry Division commander, described the BIFF under Abu Torayfe as “peace spoilers.”
“The Daesh-inspired Abu Toraife Group was responsible for the attack as they are known to be peace spoilers and to sow terror in the community,” said Sobejana who also heads the Army-led Task Force Central.
The military and police said three men went inside Theresa’s Place videoke bar in Barangay Poblacion 4, Midsayap, North Cotabato at 7 p.m., and ordered soft drinks then left.
Minutes after the suspects left on a motorbike, an explosion ripped through a bamboo-made shanty inside the videoke bar compound.
Bomb experts said the IED, concealed in a jersey shirt left by the suspects, was made of aluminum flash powder as the main charge and placed in a plastic container with a mobile phone as a detonator, and concrete nails as fragmentation.
“Similar to other IEDs set off by the BIFF,” a bomb expert who requested that his name not be mentioned. No one was hurt in the Midsayap bomb attack.
The BIFF has been blamed for bombings, kidnappings, extortion, and other criminality in Maguindanao, North Cotabato, and Sultan Kudarat. It pledged allegiance to ISIS in 2016.
The group, composed of radical Moro rebels, bolted out of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) after the botched signing of Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain in 2008.
Military and police authorities have monitored that the BIFF under Toraife, one of the three BIFF factions based in Maguindanao, have resorted to attacking “soft targets” or civilian areas to avenge the losses it suffered during military offensives in the Liguasan marshland.
The Midsayap bombing came about eight hours after an IED was set off in General Santos City Sunday that injured eight persons. Police authorities in General Santos have also blamed the BIFF to be behind the bombing. (Edwin Fernandez/PNA)
