MANILA, Oct 3 (AFP) - The Abu Sayyaf Muslim kidnap gang is flexing its muscles in the southern Philippines, staging bombings and abductions two months after US troops ended an anti-terror campaign. A daring bomb attack that shook the relatively peaceful southern port city of Zamboanga late Wednesday and killed three people, including a US soldier involved in relief work, has been blamed on the notorious group.
The blast occurred just as a motorcyclist carrying the bomb drove in front of a karaoke bar where the victims were gathered, officials said.
National police chief Director General Hermogenes Ebdane said a sketch based on eyewitness accounts showed the motorcyclist "resembles somebody from a certain Abu Sayyaf organization."
The Filipino motorcyclist was killed in the attack, which the United States immediately condemned as terrorism.
Twenty-four other people, including another American, were wounded, some seriously, in the blast which triggered renewed concerns over the security situation in the south.
Diplomats and analysts said the security situation had worsened in recent months despite a massive military assault against the Abu Sayyaf, or the "Bearer of the Sword", which the US and Philippine governments have said has links to the al-Qaeda network.
"The latest bomb attack and the generally increasing crime cases we are reading about in the south is of course disturbing and does not speak well for the Philippines, especially in luring investors and tourists during this difficult economic time," a Western diplomat said.
"The problem may be in the south but the image is the Philippine national image," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Apart from several low-profile bombings in recent weeks, the Abu Sayyaf and units linked to the group had kidnapped six Christian preachers, two of whom were beheaded, several university teachers, three Indonesian seamen and two broadcast journalists.
The Abu Sayyaf guerrillas became bolder after some 1,000 US crack troops left the country at the end of July following a six-month joint assault against them, analysts said.
The Abu Sayyaf laid low during the US mission, which was supported by some 5,000 local soldiers who now have been diverted elsewhere, including against communist guerillas in the country's north.
Retired military general Alfred Filler said Wednesday's attack using a bomb-laden motorcycle only showed that armed groups, like the Abu Sayyaf, were becoming bolder.
"This is the first of its kind, using a motorcycle as a vehicle for bombing," he told AFP. "It is an indication of escalating sophistication" in bombing attacks in the Philippines and probably we'll be seeing more of such acts or even humans (strapped with these bombs)."
Filler said the problem in the south was stoked by decades of bloody Muslim separatist insurrections, describing it as a "complex combination of political, social, economic, cultural and religious factors."
Wednesday's bomb attack came a week after Abu Sayyaf leader Khaddafy Janjalani, the brother of the group's founder, urged Muslims to rise up against the Philippine and US governments.
He criticised the Philippines for supporting the Americans in their "war on terrorism," referring the United States as "new crusaders."
Although weakened, the Abu Sayyaf appears to be reshaping itself into an ideological militant organisation from a loose collection of kidnap gangs in an effort to attract new members and regain the offensive in the south, said the respected US think tank Stratfor.
"This could present a renewed challenge to the Philippine military and US soldiers in the country," it said.
If the Abu Sayyaf succeeds in gaining new, more committed recruits, Wednesday's attack on the US soldiers "may be just the first shot in a renewed bombing campaign targeting US forces rather than Filipino citizens and businesses," Strafor warned.
ZAMBOANGA, PHILIPPINES, 3-OCT-2002: US and Philippine investigators search, early October 3, 2002, the area of a bomb blast that rocked late October 2 the southern city of Zamboanga which claimed the lives of one US soldier and two Filipinos and injured 23 others. The motive for the blast, when a bomb ripped through a karaoke bar just metres away from a military arms depot, still remains unknown.
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