If it’s true that the bomb attack on a Jolo church was carried out by foreign suicide bombers, the situation has become “more deadly and dangerous,” Senator Panfilo Lacson said Sunday.
READ: 'Suicide bomb' theory splits Palace, AFP
Previous bomb attacks have always been planted and remotely detonated, Lacson, a former police chief, said.
Worse, he said, if locals learn to do it, there will be even more suicide bombings, he said.
Lacson said investigators should reconstruct the crime scene to get a better idea of what happened before, during and after the bombing.
He recalled the Rizal Day bombing in 2000, when he was still the Philippine National Police chief, and saw the capabilities of the crime lab, the Army and the forensic teams from the National Bureau of Investigation.
They were able to reconstitute the bomb and determine whose signature it bore.
“So there was a lead. This means the investigation done was methodical and systematic,” he said.
Senator Aquilino Pimentel III, meanwhile, condemned the grenade attack on a mosque in Zamboanga City on Jan. 30, which claimed the lives of two visiting Muslim missionaries.
READ: 2 Zambo blast suspects eyed
“Churches, mosques, temples, or other such places dedicated to religious worship must be respected and revered. They should be a safe sanctuary for the people and not a place of carnage,” Pimentel said.
On Sunday, more than 3,000 people from various religious groups gathered at the Quezon Memorial Circle in Quezon City to denounce the two bomb explosions at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Jolo, Sulu.
Muslims and non-Muslims took part in the “Lakad Tungo sa Kapayapaan, Iwaksi ang Karahasan,” greeted one another and prayed for peace in Mindanao.
Aleem Said Ahmad Basher of the Imam Council of the Philippines and Msgr. Albert Songco, vicar general of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, held a symbolic exchange of a Qur’an and a Bible.
The vicar general of the Philippine National Police, Fr. Onie Rosaroso, said there is still hope for peace in Mindanao.
“Together with our Muslim brothers and sisters, we are one to attain peace. We will be praying hard to violence not to happen again,” he said.
Secretary Saidamin Pangarunan of the National Council for Muslim Filipinos said those behind the twin blast if proven that they are Abu Sayyaf must never claim to be Muslims.
