[Episcopal News Service]
Church leaders asked for prayers and calm after condemning two bombings in the southern Philippines which killed six people and wounded about 150 and which authorities blamed on a group fighting for a separate Islamic state.
'We pray for the victims and their families as we ask God for justice. Let not hostility reign in our hearts but justice,' Monsignor Hernando Coronel, spokesperson for the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines, said in a statement after the two bombs went off in adjacent shopping malls in Zamboanga City. Noting that the Roman Catholic bishops 'strongly condemn' the bomb attacks, Coronel hoped that the latest bomb attacks would not widen misunderstandings between Christians and Muslims, who are a minority in the country. Zamboanga is a port city with an 80 per cent Christian population located near predominantly Muslim islands in the southern Philippines.
The Philippines military blamed Abu Sayyaf, a violent group notorious for kidnapping Christians and foreigners, for carrying out the attacks. Defense officials said they feared the violence might 'spill over' into the capital, Manila. Some Philippine officials have linked Abu Sayyaf with the al-Qaida terrorist group.
The attacks were the third in a series in the Philippines during the month of October. A bomb attack on October 2 at a bar frequented by American servicemen, also in Zamboanga City, killed a U.S. Special Forces (Green Beret) sergeant and three Filipinos and injured 20 others. Police blamed Abu Sayyaf for that attack. Six other people were killed and more than 20 were wounded in a similar attack on October 10 in Kidapawan City, also south of Manila. The military blamed renegade members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) for the Kidapawan attack. The MILF has been waging a rebellion for a separate Muslim state in the southern Philippines since 1978.
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