Villager killed in another Central Mindanao attack

CAMP SIONGCO, Maguindanao — A villager was killed while a militiaman was seriously wounded in a grenade attack in the Sultan Kudarat town of Lebak the other day, the fourth bombing in Central Mindanao in six days.

Capt. Onting Alon, deputy civil relations chief of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said Eldio Loreto died on the spot from multiple shrapnel wounds.

Ando said Loreto, along with Eugenio Gabriel, a member of the Citizens Armed Forces Geographical Unit (CAFGU), was inside a house in Barangay Kitudak when a fragmentation grenade was thrown at them through an open door.

Alon said the 6th ID is certain that the spate of bombings that rocked Central Mindanao in recent days were unrelated and that most of those targeted in the attacks were members of families involved in land disputes.

Preceding the Lebak grenade attack was the bombing two days in S.K. Pendatun, Maguindanao that left two farmers, Kamarudin Ibao and Allan Mama, seriously wounded.

The victims were inside a farmhouse in an interior farming community in S.K. Pendatun when someone hurled a fragmentation grenade at them through an open window.

The S.K. Pendatun attack happened just three days after a grenade exploded at the town proper of Pikit, North Cotabato, causing serious injuries to five bystanders.

The victims were whiling away their time in front of a barbecue stand at the town plaza when one of two motorcycles pulled over near them, tossed a Mark II fragmentation grenade and sped away.

Nine people, two of them siblings aged two and five, were wounded in a rocket attack two days earlier in Barangay Inog-og, also in Pikit.

Army probers said the victims were inside a house in Barangay Inog-og when they heard something hard landed on the roof and exploded. — John Unson