MANILA: Police defused a bomb near the US embassy in the Philippine capital Monday, with authorities blaming militants who had declared allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) group for the attempted terrorist attack.
Muslim groups have waged a decades-long armed independence struggle in the south of the mainly Catholic Philippines that is believed to have claimed more than 120,000 lives, including through deadly attacks on the nation’s capital.
Here is a list of major attacks by militant groups in Manila since 2000:
— May 2000: Bombs hit two major shopping malls, killing one person and injuring 25 others. Government lawyers accused suspected Muslim separatist guerrillas of staging the attack.
— December 2000: On a holiday for the country’s national hero, Jose Rizal, near-simultaneous bombings kill 22 people and injure more than 100 in Manila. One explosion rocks a plaza across from the US embassy. Blasts also tear through a train, a passenger bus and a cargo handling facility at the international airport.
Various militant groups including members of Southeast Asian network Jemaah Islamiyah are implicated in the attack.
— October 2002: A powerful bomb tears through a packed bus in northern Manila, killing at least two people and wounding 20 others.
Military officials say the attack appears to be the work of notorious kidnapping-for-ransom group Abu Sayyaf, which was established with help from Al-Qaeda in the early 1990s.
— February 2004: Abu Sayyaf is blamed for firebombing a ferry in Manila Bay which kills 116 people in the country’s deadliest terrorist attack.
— February 2005: The Abu Sayyaf, with help from a group of radical converts to Islam, launches coordinated attacks on Valentine’s Day that kill at least 12 people in Manila’s financial hub of Makati and in General Santos city, which is more than 1,000 kilometres (620 miles) south of the capital.
— January 2011: A mortar bomb triggered by a mobile phone on a crowded bus in Makati kills five people, with authorities blaming the attack on Muslim militants from the south.
