Grenade blast rocks Makati hotel

MANILA, Philippines - A motorcycle-riding man lobbed a grenade yesterday at the car park of a Makati City hotel, destroying four vehicles in the area.

Police reported no casualty in the explosion, which occurred at about 4:30 a.m. at the Tower Inn Hotel on Arnaiz Avenue.

A report to Superintendent Jaime Calungsod, chief of the Southern Police District (SPD) by Makati police chief Senior Superintendent Froilan Bonifacio said a Toyota Revo (XBE-775) owned by Cedrick Chinnes Ong, a Chevrolet sport utility vehicle (ZEV-294) rented by Joseph Doyle, a Nissan Sedan (TTJ-731) of Peter Bantagui, and a Toyota Altis Sedan (ZNF-700) of Palileo Agosto were destroyed.

The vehicles’ owners were all staying at the hotel, which is a few meters away from the Landmark and the Glorietta malls.

Calungsod ruled out terrorism as a motive for the attack.

“From the fragments recovered at the scene, the attackers used an Mk2 time-fused grenade, a World War II-era defensive grenade,” he said. “The attacker had no intention to hurt somebody. Maybe, they were just threatening someone.”

Calungsod said members of the Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) and bomb disposal experts were immediately deployed to the crime scene.