MANILA/ZAMBOANGA CITY, 21 October 2007 — A group allied with the Abu Sayyaf and the Indonesian terror group Jemaah Islamiyah has claimed responsibility yesterday for Friday’s deadly bomb attack on a shopping center in the Philippine financial district of Makati City, but police said they have doubts about it.

ABS-CBN broadcast network said a man calling himself Sheikh Omar and claiming to be a spokesman for the Rajah Solaiman Movement (RSM) phoned the television station to say that his group was behind the attack.

Also in a text message to ABS-CBN News, the person who said he was RSM spokesman Ruben Omar Lavilla, alias Sheik Omar, demanded the release of founder Hilarion del Rosario Santos, alias Ahmed Islam Santos, within 24 hours or the group will launch a similar attack targeting public places and vital installations.

“Jihad (holy war) against the Christians will continue if the military will not stop the killings of Muslims in Mindanao and Ahmed Santos should be released within 24 hours, otherwise, (Christians will) suffer again the consequences,” the caller said.

Del Rosario, captured in October 2006 at a hideout in Zamboanga City in southern Philippines, was the head of the RSM, a group of Christians who converted to Islam and suspected to have links with the Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah.

The RSM is an organization of Filipinos who have converted to Islam, was suspected of carrying out the Rizal Day bombing in 2000 and the February 2004 bombing of a Super Ferry ship that killed 116 people on Manila Bay. The group was also implicated in plots to attack the US Embassy in the Philippines.

Security officials, however, were not quick to jump into conclusions, saying there is no verified claim of responsibility for the attack that killed at least nine people and injured more than 120 others. Officials raised the number of fatalities to nine yesterday after rescuers recovered the body of a man earlier declared missing from the rubble.

Police said chemists found traces of C-4 explosive component in the rubble of the shopping mall, and offered a reward of 2 million pesos for anybody who can give information on the suspects.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo announced the reward during a meeting with top security officials yesterday.

“We are still verifying those reports. As of now all are just speculation,” Philippine National Police Director General Avelino Razon said yesterday.

Razon expressed doubts about the identity of the person claiming to be Sheikh Omar. “The voice clip of the supposed conversation when heard by an arrested RSM (member), Pio de Vera, yielded negative results,” he said.

Razon said the caller’s intonation was of someone from the southern Philippines and distinct from Omar’s Ilonggo intonation.

Geary Barias, the chief of the metropolitan police force, also expressed doubts that the perpetrators were really from the RSM. “We are still investigating this claim, but the RSM has no more capability to carry such attack,” he said.

Bishops and Muslim Scholars

In the southern region of Mindanao, the Philippines’ largest Muslim rebel group, Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), offered to help investigate the bombing.

“We are willing to help the Philippine government investigate the blast or provide intelligence to authorities and even track down then perpetrators if ever they are now in southern Philippines,” MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu told Arab News.

The country’s Catholic bishops and Muslim scholars and leaders separately condemned the bombing and asked the public to join them in prayer for the problems besetting the country.

In a statement, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) extended its condolences to the victims and relatives of the victims of the bombing and said it was praying that such an occurrence will not happen again.

In the south, the Darul Ifta (House of Opinion) in Mindanao, a collegial body of Islamic scholars and religious leaders, condemned the perpetrators of bombing as unacceptable.

“The Muslim community in the Philippines condemns the bomb attack. It is the work of insane people,” Esmael Ebrahim, liaison officer of the Darul Ifta in Mindanao, said on behalf of his group yesterday. Ebrahim urged the government to bring justice to the victims of the explosion. But Ebrahim said the military and the police should be circumspect in their investigation to avoid illegal arrests among Muslims residing in Manila.

Diversionary Tactic?

Opposition Sen. Antonio Trillanes, a former navy officer jailed for leading a failed 2003 mutiny, said the attack might have been staged to divert the people’s attention from the bribery scandals facing Arroyo and her close allies.

Trillanes, elected to the senate post in May, pointed to National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales and armed forces chief Gen. Hermogenes Esperon as those behind the attack.

Gonzales dismissed the accusations as opportunistic politicking. “I cannot imagine what kind of sick mind would think this is a diversionary tactic,” he said. “Our fellow Filipinos are bloodied and some people insist it is a diversionary tactic. The perpetrators of this blast have no souls.”

Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno lambasted Trillanes for playing an “unfair game” and said he ordered the police to interview Trillanes to find out if he has evidence to back his accusations.

“We implore the political opposition to please exclude this tragedy from their laundry list of issues they are going to fire at the administration.”

Leftist opposition Rep. Teodoro Casiٌo agreed with Trillanes, saying the timing of the blast was suspicious since it came at a time when Arroyo’s government had not yet satisfactorily explained where the cash gifts to congressmen and local officials distributed at the presidential palace last week came from. “The timing is highly suspect,” he said. “It is very difficult not to link this with the political developments in our country now.”

The bombing coincided with the call of three Catholic bishops for President Arroyo to step down amid several controversies linked to the president such as the broadband project with Chinese firm ZTE and recent allegations that Malacaٌang gave out “cash gifts” to congressmen local government officials.

Arroyo, who survived two impeachment bids over allegations she rigged the 2004 presidential elections, canceled her scheduled trip to the central Philippine cities of Ormoc and Tacloban in the aftermath of the bombing. (With reports from Inquirer News Service & Agencies)