Suspected Islamic militants set off a bomb on Tuesday on the roadside in southern the Philippines that killed one soldier and wounded eight others, Al Ahram News reported. The troops were on a military truck in Basilan Island when the bomb exploded after the truck had passed, said Ensign Chester Ramos, spokesman of a special anti-terror task force. "But the shrapnel of the bomb hit our troops aboard the vehicle," Ramos stated. "The bomb is believed to have been planted by members of the Abu Sayyaf, a Muslim extremist group founded in the 1990s with seed money from the AlQaeda movement of Osama bin Laden," Ramos added. Abu Sayyaf group is active in Basilan and southern islands of the Philippines, and has been blamed for the worst militant attacks in the Philippines history including the 2004 firebombing of a ferry on Manila Bay that claimed more than 100 lives. The group pledged allegiance to Islamic State fighters in Syria and Iraq, in a video posted by their leader showing himself and other gunmen, last year.
