SW News: Shattering the fragile peace in the restive southern Philippines, a bomb exploded in a bus near Cotabato City on Mindanao Island on Tuesday, killing a five-year-old child and injuring six others.

According to police, the bus was traveling along a highway when the blast occurred. Though no one has claimed responsibility for the explosion, fingers point to insurgents who are active in the region. Southern Philippines is crawling with communist insurgents as well as armed jihadists. The bomb went off at the rear of the vehicle, according to Chief Master Sergeant Randy Hampac, police spokesman in Aleosan town.

Among the wounded are a five-month-old baby and a three-year-old child. One of the survivors noticed a man disembarking from the bus leaving his bag behind. Shortly afterwards, the bag exploded. According to Hampac, it is the first such attack in the town although terrorists have targeted buses, Catholic churches and markets in other parts of the island.

The region has been plagued with insurgency for decades. In 2014, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the largest Islamic rebel outfit in the region, inked a peace treaty with the government ending years of armed conflict. However, there are still small armed Muslim outfits that are against the peace agreement and some of them are believed to be affiliated with the Islamic State. In May 2017, local militants and pro-Islamic foreign fighters captured Marawi, the largest Muslim-majority city in the Philippines. It took the military five months to flush out the militants and recapture the city at the cost of more than a thousand lives.