Financial support starts pouring in for Cotabato blast victims

COTABATO CITY – Financial support for the victims of a grenade blast at a concert here Wednesday night has started pouring in, but barely enough to meet the needs of the injured who belong mostly to poor Muslim and Christian families.

Both religious communities here urged President Arroyo yesterday to help provide medicines for victims still confined in local hospitals.

Seven people were killed while 123 others wounded in the attack blamed on five teenagers who belong to the 18-K gang, a notorious group of high school students and dropouts, some coming from prominent families.

The suspects, all minors, are now detained at the City Police Office undergoing interrogation.

The city council appropriated Thursday P700,000 to sustain the medication of the victims.

Bai Sandra Sema, wife of Cotabato City Mayor Muslimin Sema, was set to airlift to Manila six of the more than 30 injured still undergoing medication at hospitals, but was dissuaded by attending physicians who feared the flight might aggravate their condition.

Most of those to be brought to Manila supposedly sustained shrapnel wounds in their heads and doctors feared that aircraft cabin pressure would cause internal hemorrhage.

Sources at the City Health Office said the P100,000 the Sema family donated for the victims has already been spent for costly antibiotics and laboratory tests.

Maguindanao Gov. Datu Andal Ampatuan and the provincial board chaired by Vice Gov. Bimbo Sinsuat, added P50,000 yesterday to the funds raised by the Notre Dame Village Parish, which is helping oversee the victims’ medication.

Executive Secretary Nabil Tan of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao also contributed P10,000.

Relief workers from the regional office of the Department of Social Welfare and Development have been monitoring round-the-clock the condition of the wounded and have been continuously dispensing food and provisions.

A concert Wednesday night by the Brothers and Friends band at the Notre Dame Parish compound was rudely interrupted when 17-year-old suspect Musib Mamalinta allegedly tossed a grenade right in the midst of the merrymaking.

The concert was meant to highlight the community’s celebration of the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, the local patron saint.

The grenade, a Mark-II bush-clearing explosive, was wrapped with iron shavings and jagged fragments of cast steel.

Mamalinta and his companions, Jasim Sinsuat, Pelot Cabud, Nasser Datukali –all Maguindanaons –and Munabantog Natangcop, a Maranaw, allegedly got mad after the rock band turned their request to play "Stupid Love," hit song of the rap group Salbakuta.

Senior Superintendent Sangacala Dampac, city police director, said witnesses have pointed to Mamalinta as the one who threw the grenade into the crowd.

The patients listed as critical as of press time were Abbas Muamar, Rizaldy Ringgor, Usman Samad, Ombra Balma, Dana Marie Fernandez, Catherine Gunsi, and Bayron Jay Bugat. –With Christina Mendez