Inspector Roger Legaspi, chief of the Rosary Heights police precinct, said two suspects, one of them a woman, left the bomb, placed inside a box, in front of the Las Hermanas here and hurriedly left.
Legaspi said the bomb exploded before bystanders who saw it could ask help from their station. The bomb went off as a traditional kawing, or Muslim wedding ceremony, went on inside the same restaurant.
Eight guests who were seriously wounded in the blast – Ismael Tarak, 23; Fahad Campiao, 16; Basulon Piang, 20; and his sibling, Baya, 16; Sahabudin Zainudin, 17; Suharto Almada, 1; Jerry Ali, 15; Saida Sandaya, 23 – were rushed to the nearby Cotabato Regional Medical Center for medication.
Captain Ferdinand Escalante, chief of the Army’s 6th Explosives Ordnance Detachment here, said the bomb was fashioned from a live 60 MM mortar projectile rigged with a contraption of a time-delayed, battery-operated blasting mechanism.
Legaspi their city director, Senior Superintendent Sangacala Dampac, has dispatched more than a dozen intelligence agents to help identify the people responsible for the bombing and the motive for the attack.
Preceding yesterday’s bloody incident was the bombing inside the 32-hectare compound here of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao that disrupted the wedding last Monday of a son of Maguindanao Gov. Datu Andal Ampatuan and the youngest daughter of Datu Michael Sinsuat, an equally influential leader. Three soldiers guarding the venue of the wedding, Msgt. Noel Bello, Sgt. Joeny Gaya-gaya and Pfc. Raymond Jocson, who belong to the Army’s 7th Infantry Battalion, sustained shrapnel wounds in different parts of their bodies.
The bomb was left at a parking space near the gates of the Shariff Kabungsuwan Cultural Complex inside the ARMM compound, near the spot where the vehicle of the groom, Hoffer Ampatuan, was to park. The Ampatuan clan, known for its hardline stand against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, was quick to blame the MILF for the attack.
Gov. Ampatuan was himself ambushed by alleged MILF rebels thrice last year in different parts of the province.
His relative, now Administrator Zamzamin Ampatuan of the Southern Philippines Development Authority, also survived two alleged assassination attempts by the MILF, which resulted in the death of one of his security escorts and left a dozen others, including himself, wounded.
Despite the panic triggered by the incident, the wedding of the younger Ampatuan to Bai Ingrid Sinsuat, youngest daughter of Datu Puti Sinsuat, former mayor of Upi town in Maguindanao, pushed through, albeit delayed.