A deadly bombing of a Catholic Mass in southern Marawi city this week has exposed the Philippine military’s weakness in intelligence gathering, officials said Thursday, after identifying two Filipinos as main suspects in the attack claimed by Islamic State extremists.
Five years after then-President Rodrigo Duterte declared government forces had liberated the southern city of Marawi from Islamic State militants, the area remains far from normal with thousands of residents living in limbo in temporary shelters.
When martial law first took effect in 2017, citizens worried it would bring back the harsher measures taken by authoritarian former president Ferdinand Marcos in 1972 to stop plots against his government