By Roy Ramos
ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines
Security forces were beefed up Wednesday in Cotabato City, the seat of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, in the Philippines' south, following a bomb attack that wounded a soldier and four other people.
Senior Superintendent Rolen Balquin, the Cotabato City police chief, said additional police forces backed up by army soldiers have been deployed in the city's commercial district and in vital government installations to preempt similar terror attacks suspected to have been carried out by the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), which, like the al-Qaeda linked Abu Sayyaf, espouses an independent Islamic state in the Philippines' south.
Balquin said an improvised explosive device went off around 8:30 p.m. Tuesday along Makakua St. wounding an army Special Forces soldier and four civilians.
The bomb was apparently intended for a roving security patrol from the army's special forces.
Boy Razalan, incident commander of the city's disaster risk reduction and management council, said the victims were taken to the Cotabato City Regional and Medical Center hospital.
While Zamboanga is under threat from a Moro National Liberation Front faction that laid siege to the city on September 9, 2013, killing more than 300, Cotabato City is facing similar security problems from the BIFF, a breakaway group of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the Philippines' once largest Muslim rebel group that signed the "Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro" peace deal with the government March 27.
Balquin revealed they have been monitoring security threats in the city since last week but declined to give details or name the threat groups.
The BIFF and Abu Sayyaf, another militant Muslim group in the Philippines' south, have pledged support to the Islamic State, or IS, a militant group formerly known as ISIL that has seized parts of Syria and Iraq.
The IS links, however, have yet to be verified by the Philippines military.
Cotabato City is the capital of Maguindanao province, a MILF bastion.
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