A bomb explosion that killed two people in a Muslim community in Manila was sparked by a personal feud, Philippine police officials said on Sunday, but the ISIS group claimed its fighters were responsible.
Police said a package being delivered by a man exploded late Saturday in downtown Manila’s Quiapo district, killing him and another man receiving it at a Shia centre. Police said four others were wounded.
Another explosive, either a homemade bomb or a grenade, went off more than two hours later near the scene of the first blast and wounded two policemen deployed to help secure the area and investigate the bombing, according to authorities.
Metropolitan Manila police chief Oscar Albayalde said the bombing apparently was set off by a personal feud, adding the package that contained the explosive was intended for a specific person who may have been the target of the attack.
Albayalde called for public vigilance following the bombing, the second in more than a week in Quiapo, a popular transportation, shopping and religious hub mostly for the working class in the capital. The Manila police went on alert following the explosions.
The ISIS group, through its Aamaq media arm, claimed responsibility for the Quiapo explosion, saying in a brief statement that “five Shias have been killed and six others injured by detonating an explosive device by the ISIS State fighters in central Manila.” The death toll differed from details released by the police and other officials in Manila.
There have been fears of the Sunni-Shiite violence spreading to the largely Roman Catholic Philippines, home to minority Muslims who are mostly Sunnis in the country’s south. A Shia centre was bombed in the south in 2015 and two local Shiites were killed in an attack near Manila that same year.