City officials later concluded that the van had not been intended for the checkpoint at all. Its likely target was a parade of at least 2,000 schoolchildren and teachers, scheduled for that same morning to commemorate National Nutrition Month. The checkpoint, 60 meters from where the driver stopped the van, was simply the obstacle the vehicle could not get past. Had the van reached the parade route, the death toll would have been catastrophic. As it was, the parade went ahead despite the bombing. News of the explosion spread through the city even as children marched, creating an undercurrent of fear among participants and spectators. The event was declared a success, though the word carried a grim secondary meaning.

ISIS claimed responsibility through its Amaq News Agency, calling the attack a "martyrdom operation" carried out by Abu Khatir Al-Maghribi, whom it identified as a Moroccan national. Philippine authorities were skeptical. Their initial investigation revealed details inconsistent with a suicide attack. The driver had stopped the van 60 meters from the checkpoint and asked people there to help push the vehicle, behavior that made no sense for someone intent on self-destruction. Twenty minutes elapsed between the van's stop and the explosion, suggesting a remote-detonated device rather than a suicide vest. A burned mobile phone cover recovered from the blast site reinforced this theory. Rommel Banlaoi of the Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research used this evidence to discount ISIS's claim.

The bombing did not occur in a political vacuum. Julkipli Wadi, chair of the University of the Philippines Institute of Islamic Studies, connected the attack to the ongoing peace process between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. The MILF was in the process of integrating with the government under the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro, and the Bangsamoro Organic Law was being finalized. As the MILF transitioned from insurgency to governance, Wadi argued, radical splinter groups were exploiting the resulting power vacuum in areas the MILF had formerly controlled. Banlaoi echoed this analysis: the attack was an effort by extremists to sabotage the peace process. Lamitan, one of only two cities in Basilan, sat precisely in the space between old conflict and emerging governance.

The Magkawit detachment sat at the converging boundaries of barangays Bulanting, Colonia, and Maganda, a location that made it both a natural chokepoint and a symbol of the government's security presence in Basilan. Lamitan has long been a focal point of the conflict between state authority and militant groups in the southern Philippines. The bombing reinforced what residents already knew: that checkpoints were both protection and target, that peace processes generate their own violence, and that the distance between a van and a parade of children can be measured in meters. The soldiers who flagged down the van that morning performed the routine act that saved those 2,000 children. Their vigilance, not the bomber's failure, determined the outcome.