Bomb Attack in Philippines after Week of Fighting

News is trickling through of a bomb attack on a night market in Davao, Philippines. This is the home town of the current President, Rodrigo Duterte.

14 people have been killed and at least 60 injured.

The President has declared a “state of lawlessness” to exist in the region, and both police and armed soldiers are being deployed.

There is some confusion as to who might be responsible for the attack. The President has suggested drug syndicates might be responsible, and that may not be an unreasonable assumption given the President’s extraordinarily tough measures on drug users and sellers that have seen thousands shot (CAUTION: link contains very graphic images).

Nonetheless, a militant group that the Philippine government has been battling has publicly claimed responsibility for the murders. The group is called Abu Sayyaf.

Last Monday, in intensive fighting, 12 Philippine soldiers were  killed in an offensive against the militants.

Note that, consistent with the rest of the world, much of the conflict is located within an urban environment, the battlefield of the 21st century.

Here is fresh evidence – as if we needed any more – that the everlasting gospel is always relevant, and always necessary. Human conflict, itself the product of human sin, has never departed out of the world. Peace remains as elusive today as it was when Cain first smashed his brother to death at the beginning of the world.

May Christ’s true people discover, as the expansion of evil continues commensurate with the expansion of the human population and its ever-greater concentration in urban centres, that there is a divine peace that He alone can give.

“Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.”