Source:  www.assistnews.net

Date:  2008-04-24

- churches and clergy face escalating persecution in the south

By Elizabeth Kendal
World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission (WEA RLC)
Special to ASSIST News Service

AUSTRALIA (ANS) -- A crude but powerful bomb exploded outside Zamboanga's large modern metropolitan Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception at 4:20am on Sunday 13 April. While it caused no injuries, that was not the intention of the bombers. According to Zamboanga City police chief, Jonathan Perez, the bombers had intended to plant their two bombs inside the Cathedral and then detonate them during the 5 am Mass. (Link 1)

The insidious terror plot was foiled when the church caretaker noticed three men acting suspiciously and talking in a dialect spoken on the mainly-Muslim island of Jolo. He alerted the Cathedral's security guard, forcing the suspects to withdraw. Before fleeing on their motorbike the suspects planted one bomb under a parish vehicle parked in the church compound which they detonated by mobile phone once they were clear. The suspects got only about one kilometre down the road before police closed in on them. At that point they threw the other bomb towards nearby shops and detonated it.

According to Spero News, the bomb that that exploded in the compound of the Immaculate Conception Cathedral caused no injures, but along with the parish van "another parish vehicle and staircases at the side of the two-storey cathedral were damaged as well. The blast also peppered a wall with shrapnel, broke the leg of a saint's statue and cracked some stained-glass windows." (Link 2)

According to police, the evidence implicates the al-Qae da-linked Islamic terror group, Abu Sayyaf. ["Abu Sayyaf" is Arabic for "bearer of the sword".] Zamboanga City police chief, Jonathan Perez, said the bombs were similar to those used by the Abu Sayyaf in previous attacks in other parts of the south. "The signature on the bombs were almost identical. They used a mobile phone to detonate a crude bomb made from an 81mm and 60mm mortars." (Link 1)

On 17 April Zamboanga's Sun Star reported that the police and military authorities in Zamboanga City had identified one of the suspects in the Cathedral bombing as "Joel Salem alias Abu Madja, an Abu Sayyaf bomb expert." (Link 3)

If the bombers had been successful they would have perpetrated a serious act of terrorism that would surely have resulted in multiple fatalities and left many worshippers with serious injuries.