KIDAPAWAN CITY, Cotabato, Philippines—The bombings that recently hit Central Mindanao and Maguindanao were the Moro Islamic Liberation Front's way of pressuring the government to put the peace process back on track and pave the way for the building of an Islamic state in Mindanao, a local official said on Wednesday.

North Cotabato Vice Governor Manny Piñol said the MILF did similar attacks in the past to force the government to give in to its demands.

He did not specify any incident but added bombings have been the rebel group's way of pushing for its demands.

"This is the group's way of communicating with us. 'You better give us what we want or else violence will continue,'" he said.

The MILF has repeatedly denied any role in the explosions and even called for an independent probe.

"Simple logic would show us that attacking civilians would scare away sympathy," Eid Kabalu, MILF civil-military affairs chief, said.

Recently, the government said peace talks with the rebels—which collapsed after the Supreme Court stopped the signing of the controversial memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain (MOA-AD)—could resume very soon. The MOA would have been the legal framework for efforts toward the establishment of a "Bangsamoro juridical entity" or an autonomous Moro state in parts of Mindanao, perceived by some as already having semi-independent status.

The announcement on the peace talks’ revival came in the wake of the continuing violence in Maguindanao that already displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

"For me this is a clear reprise or a recurrence of the many violent incidents that we often experience shortly before the restart of the peace talks. With the announcement by government that the talks with the MILF are about to start again, bombings have occurred once again in many areas in Mindanao," Piñol said.

At least a dozen explosions occurred in the provinces of Maguindanao, Sultan Kudarat, Sarangani, and North Cotabato in June alone.

"Why do I say this is a reprise of previous violent incidents? Because for us who have grown to our age in this conflict area called the province of North Cotabato, incidents like these often happen whenever there is a plan to restart the peace talks," Piñol said.

But Piñol said the bombings would not stop the people of North Cotabato from fighting for real peace.

"For us, we have learned to live with this, and for us, no amount of bombings could change our position on the efforts to attain peace in Mindanao," he said.

"The sentiment of our people is very clear, yes we want peace, but the peace that we would like to have should be a product of a consensus among all stakeholders, not only in North Cotabato, but elsewhere in Mindanao," he said.

Piñol said the peace that he and others like himself wanted would be "more than just a piece of paper signed by both the government and the MILF."

"It should be a peace plan that will address the roots of the problems that gave birth to organizations like the MILF, this is the position of the province of North Cotabato," he said.

Piñol previously said his province would be against any effort to place any part of Mindanao—which previously voted against Moro regional autonomy—under a new or expanded Bangsamoro autonomous state.