Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said the military suspects the improvised bomb that recently killed 11 people in Basilan was targeting the feeding program of the Department of Education (DepEd) to be attended by thousands of children.

“We suspect that this guy (driver) was trying to bring his van in a plaza in Lamitan because there was a graduation, Deped feeding program. There were about 4,000 kids who will be there that morning,” he said late Thursday.

“That is our suspicion that he will parked the van there earlier and he will leave then he will just used a remote control so we suspect that they are really targeting the kids,” he added.

Lorenzana added he also believed the driver of the van is a Moroccan national based on the statement of the couple who passed by the area and were able to see the driver.

“Now are we certain that he is really the Moroccan, according to the intelligence 80 percent that it was him because on the pictures that they got from Jolo. His face was there with a written word martyr,” he said.

“We'll did he die? We don't know. Maybe he is that guy... but for me the qualifications point shows that he is the guy because he was not able to speak the dialect in the area, and then fair looking, tall and with curly hair, that is the declaration of the two witnesses,” he added.

Lorenzana added that based on the ongoing investigation the explosive materials used in the bombing comes from the southern border of the country.

“Our news on that is these are made of ammonium nitrate. It is used for fertilizers. These people are expert in making bomb because they can use this ammonium nitrate, lot of them, plus some gunpower plus triggering devices,” he said.

“Our news on that is that these are from southern border, from Sabah, or Indonesia because we were not able to check everything that comes from there. They can the ammonium nitrate there in Basilan, Sulu and Zamboanga. We are already monitoring those who are selling there, who are the customers and on where they used it,” he added. Robina Asido/DMS