Bomb goes off near mayor's house; 4 wounded

COTABATO CITY, Philippines – Four people were seriously wounded when an improvised explosive believed planted by Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) guerrillas went off near the residence of the mayor of Datu Piang, Maguindanao Saturday night, the military said.

Col. Jonathan Ponce, spokesman of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said the bomb, fashioned from a live 60-mm mortar projectile attached to a battery-operated blasting mechanism, exploded less than a hundred meters away from the house of Mayor Shamer Uy at the Datu Piang town proper.

Ponce said their intelligence operatives in Datu Piang, scene of recurring clashes between soldiers and fighters of the MILF’s 105th Base Command, are certain that the bomb was to be planted right at the gate of Uy’s house, but its courier balked after seeing policemen guarding the mayor’s residential compound.

Four people – Kudting Latip, 25; Adshare Akmad, 32; Mohalidin Undungan, 30; and a pregnant woman initially identified as Bai – were wounded in the explosion.

Ponce said just a few minutes after the blast, villagers found another improvised explosive, said to be more powerful, a block away from Uy’s house.

The second bomb was made from an 81-mm mortar round, which had a blast radius of about a hundred meters.

Responding Army ordnance experts managed to deactivate the second bomb before it could explode.

Last June 29, an explosion ripped through a coffee shop and bakery in Barangay Kitango, Datu Saudi Ampatuan town, killing two residents and injured 13 others.

The recent spate of bombings in parts of Mindanao has prompted the Armed Forces to place its units on heightened alert.

“The bombings have become rampant these days. We have been on alert because of the bombings and because there have been continuing security threats,” said Col. Medardo Geslani, commander of the Army’s 601st Infantry Brigade.

In the past two months, Geslani said the military has seized at least 59 improvised explosives from suspected MILF camps across Central Mindanao that were ready for distribution to the cities of Davao, General Santos, Tacurong, Marbel and Kidapawan. – With Edith Regalado