Grenade blast exposes Cebu airport’s security lapses

A day after Saturday’s grenade blast at the Mactan Cebu International Airport that killed a radar technician, officials admitted there are security loopholes at the airport.

Arturo Evangelista, chief of the Police Center for Aviation Security, said the victim, Cesar Simeon, 54, could have brought in the grenade himself and it exploded by accident or someone could have brought it in with the intent to kill him.

Either way, the grenade managed to slip through the security cordon around the airport.

Evangelista said Simeon could have brought it in himself using the gate for employees of the Air Transportation Office or someone else slipped it through the general aviation entrance at the back of the airport in Bgy. Basak, Lapulapu City.

Evangelista said these entry points are not the responsibility of his office but of the airport police.

He also noted that the airport police took nearly three hours to notify his office about the incident.

"Why did it take the airport police three hours to inform us? We cannot discount the possibility that other parties are involved here. Everybody is a suspect. Who knows those who took him to the hospital could be the suspects themselves?" Evangelista said.

Evangelista, turned over the responsibility for further investigating the incident to the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group.

Evangelista said the explosion was an isolated incident and assured the public there is nothing to worry about as far as safety of passengers at the airport is concerned. — Freeman News Service