The Islamic State claimed responsibility on Sunday for the bombing of a Catholic church in the Philippines that killed at least 20 people and wounded 111 others. Some estimates put the number of people killed in the attack as high as 27.
The Philippine island of Mindanao held a referendum on Monday to establish an autonomous region that would be governed by the largely Muslim residents.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has once again threatened to eschew international human rights norms in the context of battling the Islamic State, warning that the impending liberation of ISIS hotbeds like Mosul, Iraq and Raqqa, Syria may result in a stream of jihadists making a new home in his nation.
A group of jihadist militants in the southern Philippines broke into a jail Saturday night, freeing eight jihadist comrades and twenty other prisoners. Authorities say jail guards put up minimal resistance when confronted with a group of dozens of heavily armed terrorists.
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), an armed Islamist guerrilla group, has stolen and burned hundreds of marijuana crops in a show of solidarity to President Rodrigo Duterte and a goodwill gesture to show their commitment to abiding by an ongoing peace accord.
Famed Black Eyed Peas alum, Fergie, released her much-anticipated “M.I.L.F. $” music video Friday, and some fans have blasted the sexually charged visuals as “trash.”
On Sunday, ISIS released a video titled “A Message Signed With Blood To The Nation Of The Cross.” It contained the beheading of 21 Egyptian Christian Copts who had been kidnapped in Libya. The spokesman for ISIS, his face sheathed in black cloth, states:
Oh people, recently you have seen us on the hills of Al-Sham and Dabiq’s plain, chopping off the heads that have been carrying the cross for a long time, and today, we are on the south of Rome, on the land of Islam, Libya, sending another message….And we will conquer Rome, by Allah’s permission, the promise of our Prophet, peace be upon him.
