Mortar shell lands in Cotabato school; woman, 9 students hurt

COTABATO CITY, Philippines – A 35-year-old mother and nine elementary pupils were injured when a mortar shell, apparently fired by one of two Moro factions squabbling over land, fell in a school campus in Pikit, North Cotabato yesterday,

Inspector Elias Dandan, Pikit police chief, said the mortar exploded in the campus of the Dulangan Abit Elementary School located at the boundary of Pikit and Datu Piang, Maguindanao.

Dandan said probers are certain that followers of one of two warring Muslim clans, both identified with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), were responsible for the shelling.

The two families, according to Dandan, are locked in a bloody rido (clan war), sparked by territorial disputes and squabbles for control of villages where they collect zakat or donations to sustain their revolutionary activities.

The Pikit peace and order council, in an initial report, said four of the nine children injured in the explosion – siblings Jog Iskak, seven, and Laga-lagah, six; Datu Walih Sumiling, 12; and a five-year-old girl identified only as Bai – were rushed to the Cotabato Regional Medical Center.

The other victims – Sittie Ansa Sumiling, 36; Dibay Salapudin, 11; Zoraida Ibrahim, 13; Sambukoko Kuda, seven; Muslima Kuda, eight; and Alamida Kuda, seven – were brought to the St. Therese Clinic in Datu Piang.

Dandan said it was just fortunate that the mortar shell landed at the school’s playground, not at makeshift tents also inside the campus that house dozens of evacuees displaced by recent MILF-military hostilities.