KABUL: (Middle East Press) At least fifteen people including 10 police officers were injured in an attack on a mosque on a remote Philippine island long plagued by Islamic militancy, officials said on Saturday.
According to police, two blasts, an initial grenade attack followed by a bomb explosion, struck a mosque in Jolo town on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao o Friday.
“It seems the [first] explosion was set up to draw responders as the target,” the provincial police chief senior superintendent Abraham Orbita told reporters.
Three of the five civilian causalities injured in the first explosion were children and 10 police officers were wounded by the improvised explosive device that detonated less than 10 minutes later, police said.
No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attacks, but Philippine officials often blame such incidents on militant groups such as Abu Sayyaf, said to have had links with al-Qaeda.
The island is a known stronghold of Abu Sayyaf, a small group of a few hundred Islamic militants founded in the 1990s with seed money from al-Qaeda.
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