Bomb found behind Tacurong police outpost

COTABATO CITY – Army bomb experts safely detonated using a liquid bomb disruptor a powerful improvised explosive left behind a police detachment in Tacurong City yesterday morning.

The bomb, fashioned from a live mortar projectile rigged with a battery-operated, time-delayed blasting mechanism, was neatly placed in a box packed with metal fragments.

Inspector Benjamin de los Santos, acting Tacurong police chief, said the bomb was left behind the roadside command post of the Regional Mobile Group, an elite unit of well-trained policemen with combat capability.

De los Santos said the bomb was discovered by PO1 Darwin Lopez, who wasted no time in bringing it to the center of a major intersection.

Responding Army ordnance experts managed to destroy the explosive using a disruptor before it could explode.

More than a dozen bomb attacks rocked commercial areas, including the public market, in Tacurong since 2006, some of them blamed on the Abu Sayyaf and rogue Moro rebel factions engaged in extortion. – John Unson