Philippine police reject false 'suicide bomber' claims after attack on Catholic mass in Marawi
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on December 21, 2023 at 08:22
- 3 min read
- By Lucille SODIPE, AFP Philippines
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Warning: Graphic images
The claim was shared on Facebook here on December 3, hours after four people were killed and 50 wounded in an attack on a Catholic mass in a university gym in Marawi, the Philippines' largest Muslim city.
The post includes screenshots of messages that claim police had described it as a "suicide attack". An image of a woman with the words "suicide bomber" overlaid above her is also attached.
"If this is true, what could this woman's motive be, to destroy the image of the Muslims?" reads part of the post's Tagalog-language caption.
Content warning
Similar posts were also shared elsewhere on Facebook here, here and here.
Following the bombing, the Islamic State group said on its Telegram channels that "soldiers of the caliphate detonated an explosive device on a large gathering of Christians... in the city of Marawi."
Security officials had earlier said the bombing may have been a retaliatory attack for a series of military operations against Islamist militant groups in recent days.
Philippine authorities, however, say the bombing was not a "suicide attack" as the posts claimed.
'Command-initiated attack'
Colonel Jean Fajardo, a spokeswoman for the Philippine National Police said in a press briefing on December 4 there was "no indication" it was the work of a suicide bomber.
"It was not a suicide attack," police regional director Brigadier General Allan Nobleza also told AFP on December 12.
Referring to CCTV footage released to the media by the Philippine military on December 8, days after troops launched a manhunt for the suspected assailants, Nobleza said the bombing was "a command-initiated attack... because a cellphone was used" (archived links here and here).
"You'll see in the video that the person in a white polo made a call, and after a few seconds, there was an explosion," he said.
Bombing victim
Keyword searches on Facebook found the woman pictured in the false posts is Janine Arenas, one of the four people who died in the blast (archived link).
Her photo was used in a post by an official Facebook page of Mindanao State University expressing condolences to the victims' families.
The bombing was covered by Philippine news outlets, including the Inquirer, Philstar.com and ABS-CBN, which identified Arenas as one of the victims (archived links here, here and here).
The Inquirer report also includes a photo of a banner commemorating the victims, which includes the same picture of Arenas. She is shown alongside the bombing's other victims, Riza Daniel, Evangeline Aromin, and Junrey Barbante.
Police regional director Nobleza told AFP: "Janine Arenas is one of the victims. She is not a suicide bomber; she had nothing to do with the attack."
As of December 21, the police have arrested three men, including the person who appeared to carry the bomb into the gymnasium (archived links here and here).
Authorities say the men belong to the Dawlah Islamiyah-Maute group, a pro-Islamic State militant group in the region.
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