Masked men blast Cotabato residential district

COTABATO CITY, Philippines – Masked men riding a blue pick up truck blasted a powerful improvised explosive device at a residential area here past 8 a.m. yesterday, when a local court was to start its litigation of a cashiered foreigner implicated in previous bombings in Central Mindanao.

No one was killed or hurt in the bombing, but the attack triggered panic among local communities.

Senior Superintendent Wil-lie Dangane, director of the Cotabato City police, said policemen are now trying to determine the identity of the bombers and the possible connection of the attack to yesterday’s initial deliberation at the Regional Trial Court Branch 13 here on the case of suspected foreign-trained bomber Mohammad Rafiq, a natural-born citizen of Bangladesh.

Dangane said the suspects left the IED, fashioned from incendiary chemicals rigged with bent nails and jagged metal fragments, along a street at the Don E. Sero district here and hurriedly left.

“The explosion was so loud that we in the neighborhood were stunned,” said Datu Blayme Sinsuat, who resides in a house fronting the spot where the suspects blasted the bomb.

Civilian volunteers guarding the community said two motorcycles trailed the blue pick-up truck the bombers used as it sped toward the nearby Rosary Heights area.

“Those that rode the motorcycles could be their lookouts,” Dangane said.

Text messages circulated immediately after the bombing purporting that the IED was to be brought to RTC 13 building here to disrupt the prosecution of Rafiq.  – With Dennis Carcamo