7 hurt in Pagadian grenade explosion

PAGADIAN CITY — Seven people were wounded when a bomb exploded outside a department store here yesterday, police said.

There were no immediate suspects in the blast outside the D-Beam store, said Superintendent Alberto Detalla, the city’s police chief.

The blast was caused by a fragmentation grenade lobbed at the store’s parking lot at about 8:45 a.m.

Chief Superintendent Servando Hizon, Western Mindanao police director, said extortionists harassing businessmen in the city could be behind the attack.

He said investigation showed that the store owner, Maximo Dy, got calls from unidentified people demanding P100,000 but he refused to give in.

Six of those wounded were identified as Alfonso Doliente, Gaudencia Sandoval, Abdulrahman Talumpa, Dizon Gonzaga, Rowell Zacaria and Arnold Ranier.

In another attack, 38-year-old Fermin Conting was killed and two others were wounded when a grenade was hurled into their house in Imelda, Zamboanga del Norte last Sunday.

The Pagadian explosion, however, came after intelligence sources said they were investigating an alleged bombing plot in Pagadian by the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

The intelligence sources said Pagadian and two other municipalities in Mindanao were likely targets of an MILF team led by a certain Arshan.

The MILF is the country’s main Muslim insurgent group waging a rebellion for independence since 1978. It has denied having links with the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), said to be the Southeast Asian arm of the al-Qaeda terrorist network.

Security officials say the MILF has sheltered JI extremists in its camps in Mindanao but the rebels have denied this.

Spokesmen for the MILF, which has a ceasefire in place with the government to pave the way for talks, could not be contacted for comment. — with AFP