It was not the kind of big bang that Clifford Lanipa and Christine Isidro expected on the eve of their Christian wedding scheduled Monday in the city.
Suspected members of the Abu Sayyaf bandit group detonated a powerful bomb that killed at least three people, including the groom’s best friend, and wounded 27 others in Atilano Pension House, a two-story budget hotel packed with wedding guests in Barangay (village) Canelar, officials said.
Investigators believe the blast and the ensuing fire that gutted the hotel at 9:30 p.m. on Sunday was a terrorist strike and was not linked to the wedding, said Senior Superintendent Edwin de Ocampo, acting city police director.
Still, many of the victims were from a group of 23 relatives and friends of Lanipa, an architect, who occupied six of the hotel’s 35 rooms for the planned 3 p.m. wedding at the three-star Asturias Hotel, a kilometer away.
The tragedy forced the postponement of the wedding.
The blast was believed to be one of two simultaneous bombings planned by the Abu Sayyaf. The other would have been in Isabela City on nearby Basilan Island, where two explosives were separately found and safely defused by authorities on Sunday afternoon, De Ocampo said.
It was similar to what happened at Red Palm Inn in Barangay Guiwan here on October 9 and at Mons Kitchenette in Isabela City on June 25, Chief Superintendent Felicisimo Khu, head of the Directorate for Integrated Police Operations for Western Mindanao, told reporters.
