21 Killed in Airport Bomb Blast
5 March 2003
Twenty-one people, including an American Christian missionary,
have been killed
by a bomb planted by Islamic militants at Davao airport on
Tuesday 4 March.
Over 150 people are reported to have been wounded in the
explosion. Davao is
the second largest city in the Philippine’s, and the largest
on Mindanao, where
Islamic militant groups are fighting for an Islamic homeland.
However, the
city has a majority-Christian population making it a major target
for Islamic
rebels. Elsewhere on Mindanao fourteen Christians,
including three children,
were killed when Islamic rebels staged a brutal attack on their
village on 19
February.
SEPARATIST VIOLENCE
Islamic separatists in the majority-Christian
Philippines have been fighting
for an independent Islamic homeland in the south of the country
for the 5
million Muslim Filipino community since 1972. Two Islamic
militant groups, the
Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), mainly operative on
Mindanao, and the
smaller and more extreme Abu Sayyaf, mainly in Basilan and Jolo,
are at the
forefront of the current violence. The army began a new
offensive against the
MILF in Mindanao on 10 February in which some 200 rebels are
reported to have
been killed and over 80,000 local resident displaced.
Yesterday’s bomb and the
earlier brutal attack on a Christian village are believed to have
been staged
in response to this. Majority-Christian cities, towns and
villages of the
southern Philippines are often targeted by Islamic militants.
Christian
ministers and missionaries have in the past been singled out for
particular
torture and gruesome execution because of their faith.
PRAY
Pray for healing for those who were wounded and comfort
for the grieving
relatives of those who were killed in this latest terrible
bombing.
Pray for peace and a final end to the Islamic separatist conflict
in the
southern Philippines, in which so many Christians have lost their
lives.
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