NO SUSPECTS ARRESTED YET IN CHRISTMAS DAY BOMBING OF SULU CHAPEL
[PHOTO AT LEFT - Roman Catholic priest Fr. Romeo Villanueva, fourth from left, emerges from a Catholic chapel following an explosion during a Christmas Day mass Saturday, Dec. 25, 2010 on the volatile island of Jolo, Sulu province in southern Philippines. A bomb exploded at the chapel inside a police camp in the volatile southern Philippines, wounding a priest and 10 churchgoers, officials said Saturday. - Nickee Butlangan /AP]
ZAMBOANGA CITY, DECEMBER 27, 2010 (STAR) By Roel Pareno – No suspects have yet been arrested in the Christmas Day bombing of a Catholic chapel in Sulu.
Chief Superintendent Felicisimo Khu, Integrated Police Operation Western Mindanao director, said yesterday intelligence was firming up all information for the capture of the perpetrators.
"At the moment there is no information yet who slipped the bomb but the evidences that might be collected will lead our police operatives and the military intelligence in the area as to the possible bombers and the group behind blast," he said.
Lt. Col. Randolf Cabangbang, Armed Forces Western Mindanao Command spokesman, said police and military explosive ordnance and disposal unit personnel have already recovered parts of a cell phone believed to have been used to trigger the explosive.
The bomb was not intended to inflict maximum casualty, police said.
It is not the first attack on the Catholic chapel inside the tightly guarded Camp Asturias, a few meters away from the quarters of the Sulu provincial police director in Jolo.
In December 1993, gunmen led by Galib Andang, later known as Commander Robot kidnapped American priest Fr. Clarence Bertelsman while celebrating Misa de Gallo.
Andang, who started as a member of the Moro National Liberation Front, and his followers pretended they were to attend the Mass.
After seeing Bertelsman at the altar, they took him at gunpoint and tried to take him to nearby Indanan town.
Responding soldiers and members of the MNLF led by relatives of Nur Misuari, rescued Bertelsman after a three-hour chase, which resulted in a brief encounter that left four of Andang's followers and Bertelsman wounded.
Bertelsman, after recuperating from a gunshot wound in the buttocks, was reassigned to an Oblate mission in Central Mindanao, and subsequently, died of a heart ailment four years later.
Andang later bolted the MNLF after the bungled kidnapping and helped Ustadz Abubakar Janjalani, an Afghan-trained guerilla, organize the now notorious Abu Sayyaf.
Three Oblate missionaries were killed one after another in Sulu, a component province of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, earning for the province the moniker "deadliest area for Catholic preachers."
In 1997, Sulu's vicar, Benjamin de Jesus, also a member of the Oblate of Mary Immaculate congregation, was on his way to the Mt. Carmel Cathedral in downtown Jolo when two men, armed with caliber .45 pistols, shot him repeatedly after alighting from his jeep to enter the premises of the Catholic chapel.
The murder of De Jesus remains unsolved and the gunmen that shot him remain at large.
Four years later, another Oblate priest, Benjamin Inocencio, was shot in the head by a still unknown assailant on the streets of Jolo.
The premises of Mt. Carmel Cathedral in Jolo have been bombed about five times since the early 1990s.
The Sulu provincial police remain clueless on the identities of the bombers.
The Oblates first arrived in Sulu and Tawi-Tawi after World War II to put up schools and missions for impoverished Muslim communities.
Hundreds of Muslim children have become professionals as scholars of the Oblates.
The most recent attack on the Oblate community in Sulu happened more than two years ago which resulted to the death of a popular missionary, Rey Roda.
More than 10 men snatched Roda, who hails from Cotabato City, from their convent in an island town at the sea border of Sulu and Tawi-Tawi and killed him when he fought back.
Roda was involved in scholarship projects for Muslim children in that island town.
He was also active in a special project meant to propagate public awareness on the dangers of dynamite and cyanide fishing in coral reefs in vast marine fishing grounds in Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.
ARMM acting Gov. Ansarudin Adiong, ordered yesterday the regional police to identify the people behind the bombing of the chapel in Camp Asturias and file appropriate charges against them.
Adiong, an ethnic Maranaw Muslim, said the attack was "satanic" and unIslamic.
"Islam teaches very strong respect for worship sites and religious leaders, whether they are Muslims or non-Muslims," Adiong said in s statement. – With John Unson, Helen Flores
Bombing wounds 11 at Christmas Mass in Philippines The Associated Press DECEMBER 24, 2010
MANILA, Philippines -- A bomb exploded during Christmas Day Mass at a chapel inside a police camp in the volatile southern Philippines, wounding a priest and 10 churchgoers.
The device was hidden in a ventilation window near the ceiling of the chapel, which is on the compound where the provincial police office is located in Jolo town on Jolo Island, Sulu provincial police said.
The island is a stronghold of al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf militants, but it wasn't clear who was responsible for the bombing. Investigators recovered parts of a cell phone they believe detonated the device. Philippines Explosion
Roman Catholic priest Fr. Romeo Villanueva surveys the damage of a Catholic chapel following an explosion during a Christmas Day mass Saturday, Dec. 25, 2010 at the volatile island of Jolo, Sulu province in southern Philippines. A bomb exploded during the mass at the chapel inside a police camp, wounding a priest and 10 churchgoers, officials said Saturday.
(Photo above) Philippine National Police guard the Catholic chapel following an explosion during a Christmas Day mass Saturday, Dec. 25, 2010 on the volatile island of Jolo, Sulu province in southern Philippines. A bomb exploded during the mass at the chapel inside a police camp in the volatile southern Philippines, wounding a priest and 10 churchgoers, officials said Saturday.
All of the wounded were civilians. One woman remained at a hospital for observation later Saturday, but police said one did not need hospital treatment and the others have been treated and sent home.
The Rev. Romeo Villanueva, 72, said a newly ordained priest, the Rev. Ricky Bacoldol, who was assisting him, was thrown off his feet by the blast impact and suffered a slight leg injury.
"I was reading the Gospel. I was not yet finished when there was a loud explosion," Villanueva told The Associated Press by telephone.
The roof over the front of the church collapsed and wooden beams and other debris flew in all directions. A portion of the ceiling shielded the organist from the blast, Villanueva said.
About 50 people were inside the church but many more were arriving at the time, he said.
President Benigno Aquino III's spokesman, Edwin Lacierda, said the bombing "violates the basic tenets of respect and peace of all who hold their faith dear." He said there could be no religious or political justification for the attack.
The Philippines is predominantly Catholic, but Christians are a minority on Jolo and nearby island provinces that are majority Muslim.
A bombing at the main Jolo cathedral last year killed two churchgoers, and the cathedral has been attacked in the past with grenades. The Abu Sayyaf, notorious for high-profile kidnappings and beheadings, has been blamed for those attacks.
The military estimates that battle setbacks, arrests and surrenders have reduced the group's strength to more than 300 from more than 1,000 guerrillas during its heyday in 2000.
The Abu Sayyaf is on a U.S. list of terrorist organizations and is suspected of having received funds and training from al-Qaida.
Pope to Catholics: Have courage amid church bombings By AP (The Philippine Star) Updated December 27, 2010 12:00 AM
VATICAN CITY — Iraqi Christians celebrated a somber Christmas in a Baghdad cathedral stained with dried blood, while Pope Benedict XVI exhorted Chinese Catholics to stay loyal despite restrictions on them in a holiday address laced with worry for the world's Christian minorities.
Saturday's grim news seemed to highlight the pope's concern for his flock's welfare.
In northern Nigeria, attacks on two churches by Muslim sect members claimed six lives, while bombings in central Nigeria, a region plagued by Christian-Muslim violence, killed 32 people, officials said.
Eleven people including a priest were injured by a bombing during Christmas Mass in a police chapel in the Philippines, which has the largest Catholic population in Asia. The attack took place on Jolo island, a stronghold of al-Qaeda linked militants.
But joy seemed to prevail in Bethlehem, the West Bank town where Jesus was born, which bustled with its biggest crowd of Christian pilgrims in years.
The suffering of Christians around the world framed much of the pontiff's traditional Christmas Day "Urbi et Orbi" message (Latin for "to the city and to the world"). Bundled up in an ermine-trimmed crimson cape against a chilly rain, he delivered his assessment of world suffering from the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica.
Benedict's exhortation to Catholics who have risked persecution in China highlighted a spike in tensions between Beijing and the Vatican over the Chinese government's defiance of the pope's authority to name bishops. The pope has also been distressed by Chinese harassment of Rome-loyal bishops who didn't want to promote the state-backed official Catholic church.
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