Al-Khobar gang blamed for latest North Cotabato bus bombing

COTABATO CITY, Philippines—Police officials here  said Saturday they were certain that the al-Khobar extortion group, which has ties to the Abu Sayyaf, was behind the April 11 bus blast in North Cotabato that killed three persons and wounded more than a dozen others.

Chief Suprintendent Felicisimo Khu, head of the Directorate for Integrated Police Operations in Western Mindanao, said two al-Khobar members linked to last Wednesday’s bombing were now being hunted down.

The Rural Transit Bus had come from Tacurong City in Sultan Kudarat and was on its way to Cagayan de Oro City when the bomb exploded.

“The two suspects boarded the bus in Kabacan (North Cotabato) and they detonated the homemade bomb in Carmen (also in North Cotabato),” Khu said, adding that “we have a witness that identified the suspects as such.”

He did not say how the witness was able to confirm that the suspects were members of al-Khobar.

Khu said that Rural Transit did not receive any threat from the extortion gang prior to the attack.

Khu said the police suspect that business rivalry, and not solely extortion, was the main reason the bus company was attacked by the al-Khobar gang, the same group that was responsible for over a dozen bus bombings in Mindanao since 2001.

He said whoever was unhappy about Rural Transit’s presence in the Cagayan de Oro-Tacurong route might have contracted the al-Khobar to attack the bus company. He declined to elaborate on the theory though.

To prevent a repeat of the April 11 incident, Khu said, the authorities have asked the Rural Transit management to prohibit bus drivers from picking up passengers outside designated terminal areas.