Old woman wounded in Cotabato store blast

COTABATO CITY — Suspected extortionists set off an improvised explosive inside a department store in Midsayap, North Cotabato Friday, wounding a septuagenarian woman.

The bombing came just three days after an explosion ripped through a videoke pub at the public terminal in Carmen town, also in North Cotabato, not far away from the Army camp where the joint Philippine-US military exercise "Balance Piston 06-2" is being held.

Midsayap Mayor Romeo Araña, chairman of the municipal peace and order council, said the bomb that exploded inside the BM Supermart in the commercial district of Midsayap, was fashioned from a live 60-mm mortar shell rigged with an improvised battery-operated blasting mechanism.

Arana said the explosion left a shopper, 70-year-old Lovilla Bersero, wounded.

Superintendent Chino Mamburam, Midsayap police chief, said it was just fortunate that only about a quarter of the combustible explosive charge contained by the mortar projectile was set off, thus reducing considerably the supposed shock radius of 100 feet.

"Maybe the bomb was hastily assembled, or the blasting charge was wet," Mamburam said.

Tuesday night’s explosion in a videoke pub in the town proper of Carmen left a bystander slightly wounded.

Col. Ruperto Pabustan, commander of the Army’s 602nd Infantry Brigade in Carmen, said the attack did not disrupt the ongoing joint Philippine-US military training inside their camp near the town proper.

"The US servicemen and the Filipino soldiers involved in the training are not even allowed to go outside of the (camp). We have been receiving feedback that the bombing was perpetrated by someone who has a grudge with the owner of the videoke pub," Pabustan said.

The month-long Balance Piston exercise at Camp Lucero in Carmen, which will end on Feb. 17, involves 35 US servicemen and two rifle companies of the Philippine Army’s 25th Infantry Battalion.