Westmincom chief vows to get back at ASG after Sulu bombing
Mindanao Armed Conflict • 07:15 AM Tue Jul 2, 2019
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By:
FERDINANDH B. CABRERA
COTABATO CITY (July 1) – “They started it, we will finish it.”
With these words, the visibly angry newly installed chief, Lt. Gen. Cirilito Sobejana, vowed to get back at the terrorist group and let them pay the lawlessness they had just done to nine of his subordinates.
Sobejana vowed to give justice to his fallen soldiers and to let the perpetrators of the twin bomb attacks in an Army base in Indanan, Sulu suffer the same fate.
Army Major Arvin John Encinas, speaking for Westmincom, said the military in Sulu had been on heightened alert since the January 27 Jolo Cathedral bombings that left more than 20 dead and a hundred injured.
“They were suicide bombers, and they appeared to be young Moroccans, the same Moroccan couple who set off bombs inside the Church in Jolo,” Encinas said.
Initial investigation showed, according to Encinas, that a man carrying something suspicious appeared near the military base outpost.
The sentry chief ordered his men to check on the suspicious thing the first man was carrying as he gets closer to the sentry outpost.
“As the soldiers were checking on the man and what he was carrying, an explosion occurred,” Encinas said, adding that it was a “signal” for another man with powerful explosives wrapped around him to enter the gate that was opened after the first blast.
The first blast kills three soldiers.
Responding soldiers shot the second bomber but still he managed to set off the second and more powerful bomb that produced bigger damages to the camp.
Encinas said the suspects were believed to be Moroccan nationals, in their early 20s.
To confirm that, Encinas said, the military’s Westmincom is awaiting DNA test results to determine if the Indanan bombers and the Jolo Cathedral bothers were related.
The Army is verifying reports that the slain suicide bombers in Indanan were children of the couple who set off bombs in Jolo Cathedral.
Sobejana bowed to vowed to “finish off” the Abu Sayyaf and foreign terrorists in Sulu by December 2019 in response to Pres. Duterte’s ultimatum of wiping out the ASG by 2020. (FC)