3 BIFM members hurt in Datu Saudi blast

COTABATO CITY, Philippines - Three members of the brigand Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Movement were injured in a bomb explosion in Maguindanao’s restive Datu Saudi town past 9:00 a.m. Monday.

Police and Army probers could not easily get through the scene without prior coordination with the joint ceasefire of the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

The spokesman of BIFM, Abu Misry Mama, told station dxMY of the Radio Mindanao Network here that three of their companions, one of them named Commander Karialan, were wounded in the explosion.

“There were three BIFM officials in that group, one of them was our chief-of-staff while the other was our political officer,” Mama told dxMY via mobile phone.

Mama said the victims, accompanied by their armed followers, were on their way to an “Islamic dialogue” in a secluded village in Lower Salbu in Datu Saudi town, passing through a farm trail, when the improvised explosive device, planted along the route, went off.

Barangay officials, however, doubted the assertion of Mama, hinting BIFM bandits could be transporting IEDs from their hideout to somewhere near the Barangay Salbu proper, which is traversed by the Cotabato-Gen. Santos City Highway.

Also located at the center of Salbu is a headquarters of an Army mechanized brigade, which the BIFM attacked last August, during the group’s bloody forays in five towns in the second district of Maguindanao.

Investigators said there is also a possibility that local armed groups hostile to the BIFM could have perpetrated the bombing.

Certain commanders of the BIFM are locked in bloody clan wars with armed Moro factions in Maguindanao’s adjoining Datu Saudi, Salibo and Datu Piang towns.

There have been more than a dozen a bloody encounters between BIFM forces and heavily armed Moro groups in the three towns since early 2011.