Philippines hunts for two suspects after deadly street festival bombing
Military believes pro-Islamic State group Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters carried out attack, which killed two people including young girl
Philippine authorities on Wednesday were hunting two men believed to have planted a bomb that killed two people, including a young girl, at a street festival in the nation’s south.
The blast late on Tuesday in the town of Isulan, which wounded 35 others, is the second bombing in less than in a month in the region where Islamist militants have waged a decades-long insurgency.
A man left the improvised bomb in a bag near a grocery store as crowds gathered to celebrate the town’s founding anniversary but he and an accomplice escaped, the military said.
“One [man] did the emplacement while the other one [drove] the getaway motorcycle,” Brigadier General Cirilito Sobejana said, adding a manhunt was underway.
The attack, claimed by the Islamic State group, is the latest violence the mainly Catholic archipelago’s south where a long-running Islamist insurgency has left more than 100,000 people dead.