Blasts heighten tension in Cotabato City

COTABATO CITY – Two grenade attacks here over the weekend and another on Sunday in nearby Parang, Maguindanao have heightened the tension caused by the poll body’s unseating last week of the incumbent city mayor whose supporters have since barricaded City Hall.

No one was killed or injured in the twin grenade blasts in adjoining vacant lots near City Hall, but the incidents triggered panic among residents. Military type M-67 grenades were reportedly used in the blasts.

Followers of the ousted mayor, Datu Muslimin Sema, the secretary-general of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), have padlocked City Hall since Thursday, the day the Commission on Elections declared engineer Rodel Mañara as winner in the 1998 mayoral election.

Marine Col. Tereso Badayos, spokesman of the Mindanao Area 1 unit here of the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force, said policemen also found in a strategic spot in the city proper a dud fragmentation grenade.

Sema’s supporters staged another rally here yesterday morning, prompting prominent local businessmen to call on President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to order the police and the military to work out a peaceful transition in the local leadership.

Members of the MNLF from nearby towns, including their state chairmen, joined the rally that snarled traffic for hours.

The tension spawned by Mañara’s proclamation even worsened when two still unidentified men hurled a fragmentation grenade at the compound of the Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Cathedral in Parang, about 20 kilometers southwest of this city. No one was reported injured in the explosion.

Parang’s parish priest, Fr. Jose Bagaforo, is a known supporter of Mañara and reportedly campaigned for him in the 1998 elections.