Sourcesand Trained group behind roadside bombings in Maguindanao

GUINDULUNGAN, Maguindanao ---- A group of bandits trained by slain bomb-makers Marwan and Abdul Basit Usman were behind the latest spate of roadside bombings in Maguindanao province, community sources revealed today.Informants, among them key members of different municipal peace and order councils in the second district of Maguindanao, had confirmed the group is operating under the direct control of Bongos, the figurehead now of the outlawed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF).An Islamic theologian, Bongos, who assumed leadership of BIFF after the demise in April 2015 of its founder, Saudi-trained cleric Ameril Umbra Kato, had earlier claimed allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) before his followers in a clandestine gathering late last year.He is known all throughout for fomenting deep-seated animosity by followers to non-Muslims.The same BIFF bomb experts were also tagged as responsible for the February 16 roadside bombing in Maguindanao’s Datu Salibo town that killed four, among them the local government treasurer of the municipality, Carlos Macabangen, and his son.Local sources, among them barangay officials, said the group was trained by Marwan, a Malaysian terrorist whose real name was Zulkifli bin Hir, and Usman, his Maguindanaon accomplice, in a secluded barangay in Mamasapano town also in the second district of Maguindanao.Marwan was killed in a raid at Mamasapano by police commandos on January 25, 2015.Usman, said to have trained in fabrication of improvised explosive devices in Peshawar, Pakistan and in Kandahar, Afghanistan during the late 1980s, was shot dead by members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in Barangay Muti in Guindulungan, Maguindanao five months later.Local officials said the same group of BIFF bandits perpetrated Friday night’s roadside bombing in Maguindanao’s Guindulungan town that injured two policemen and caused panic among local folks.The injured lawmen, PO2 Abdurahman Lampak and PO3 Modarie Salibo, were riding their patrol jeep together, along with five other companions, when a bomb exploded while they were passing through a secluded stretch of the Cotabato-Gen. Santos Highway in Barangay Bagan southeast of Guindulungan, en route to the town's police station.Lampak and Salibo both belong to the Guindulungan municipal police.They were immediately rushed by responding companions to a hospital for medication.Local officials said the roadside bomb was detonated from a distance using a mobile phone.The bombers, apparently members of the outlawed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, also opened fire at the patrol jeep carrying the policemen, provoking a 30-minute firefight.Villagers said the BIFF bandits retreated to a nearby hinterland when Army reinforcements arrived to help drive them away.