Rockets aimed at cops down transformer in Cotabato

COTABATO CITY – Anti-tank rockets aimed at a group of policemen responding to a grenade attack at the residence of their commanding officer in Sultan Kudarat hit a roadside power relay transformer and plunged parts of Cotabato and Sultan Kudarat into darkness for hours.

There were no reports of casualties but residents here and in Sultan Kudarat panicked, prompting the police and military to display force in strategic areas.

Inspector Wally Kasuyo, spokesman of the Cotabato City police, said two still unidentified men first blasted a fragmentation grenade at the yard of Senior Inspector Samson Obatay, chief of the City Mobile Group, in what could be the seventh attempt on his life in the past 10 years.

The decorated Obatay is known all over Central Mindanao for his unrelenting crusade against drug traffickers and guns-for-hire.

Kasuyo said Obatay, who resides in Barangay Simuay, Sultan Kudarat, retaliated with his M14 rifle but the suspects managed to jump into a river and swim away from the scene.

Kasuyo said Obatay’s subordinates were on their way to provide reinforcement to him when unidentified gunmen appeared at one side of the highway in Barangay Salimbao and, without warning, fired rocket-propelled grenades at their vehicle.

The rockets missed and exploded into a roadside fence, causing its metal fragments to ricochet and hit an overhead power relay transformer, triggering the power outage that lasted for hours.