Bomb try foiled in Maguindanao

CAMP SIONGCO, Shariff Kabunsuan – Army bomb experts deactivated Friday night a car laden with some 200 kilos of explosives left by an unidentified driver near a busy intersection at the border of Maguindanao’s neighboring Datu Saudi and Datu Piang towns.

Lt. Col. Julieto Ando, spokesman of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said the car, with license plate LDF-280, was first noticed by curious villagers, who immediately reported their observation to the local police. Responding operatives of the Army’s 6th Explosives and Ordnance Detachment in Cotabato City managed to deactivate battery-operated blasting mechanism of the car bomb immediately.

Ando said the car contained incendiary chemicals, three 81 MM mortar rounds, three 60 MM mortar projectiles, and a live round for a shoulder-fired recoilless 90 MM anti-tank weapon.

"The explosives were wired together to ensure simultaneous ignition. The explosives were neatly piled inside the car," he said.

Bomb experts also recovered from the car some 20 kilos of jagged fragments of cast iron, scattered around the explosives.

Ando said intelligence units of the 6th ID is now helping the Maguindanao police determine the group responsible for the foiled attempt to bomb a populated area at the boundary of Datu Saudi and Datu Piang towns.

The two municipalities are known strongholds of militant Islamists, some of them sympathizers of a radical guerrilla group blamed for the recent spate of deadly bombings in Central Mindanao.

The foiled bombing attempt came about seven months after a car bomb exploded along a portion of a national highway in Shariff Aguak, capital of Maguindanao, which left seven people dead and nearly killed Gov. Datu Andal Ampatuan.

Ampatuan’s convoy was passing along the area where the bomb-laden car was parked when it went off.

The police and military both blamed a "renegade faction" of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), led by radical preachers trained abroad, as responsible for the Shariff Aguak bombing.

Ando said they have been receiving persistent information from their operatives that Friday night’s attempt to bomb a roadside village in Maguindanao was a supposed retaliation for the death of Abu Sayyaf spokesman Abu Solaiman, whose real name was Jainal Antel Sali, Jr..

Radical secessionist factions in Central Mindanao are known to have links with the Abu Sayyaf and the Jemaah Islamiya.