By Hader Glang
ZAMBOANGA CITY, the Philippines (AA) - A breakaway Muslim rebel group claimed Wednesday a roadside bombing that injured two soldiers and a student near a school in the Philippines’ troubled south.
Supt. Tom Tuzon, police chief of Midsayap town in Cotabato province, said members of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) planted the improvised explosive device near a high school and detonated it when a military vehicle was nearby.
The Philippine Daily Inquirer quoted him as saying that unidentified assailants then opened fire on the vehicle, resulting in a brief clash before the gunmen escaped into nearby marshland.
The victims, who suffered shrapnel wounds to different parts of their bodies, were rushed to hospital.
Bomb specialists were reported as saying the “powerful” bomb, set off by a mobile phone, was fashioned from a live 105-millimeter howitzer shell and contained metal sheets and cut nails.
Abu Misri Mama, BIFF spokesman, told the Inquirer that the group carried out the attack since the military was planning operations against them in nearby Datu Piang town in the majority Muslim province of Maguindanao.
“So we hit them first," he said by phone.
The BIFF broke with the country's one time largest Moro rebel outfit the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in 2008 because of disagreements with the MILF's central committee's acceptance of autonomy rather than full independence for the country's Muslim south.
The BIFF is opposed to an ongoing peace process between the government and the MILF.