1 dead, 4 hurt in blasts on eve of Ramadan

COTABATO CITY - A restaurant manager was killed while four others were injured after two powerful explosions rocked the city Tuesday night while local Muslim folks were preparing for the start of the Ramadan fasting season.

Army intelligence officials were convinced that the twin attacks were perpetrated by the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), which was retaliating for its heavy losses in encounters with government combatants in Pikit, North Cotabato and Saidona town in Maguindanao last weekend.

Reynaldo Pascua, manager of the roadside Cafe Florencio here, died at the Cotabato Regional Medical Center while being treated for shrapnel wounds he sustained during the blast.

Pascua was attending to the restaurant's customers when a shoulder-fired 40MM grenade projectile exploded inside the establishment, apparently fired from a distance.

Four more people, including an off-duty Army enlisted soldier named Cornelio Inocentes Jr., were hurt in the attack. The other injured victims were identified as James Bryan Fernando, Aileen Coquia and Lynnete Guerra.

City police director, Senior Superintendent Rolen Balquin, said the BIFF could be responsible for the latest bomb attacks, but investigators have no direct evidence yet that would directly implicate the group.

The restaurant bombing was preceded by an explosion of the same type of grenade projectile, believed launched from either a Vietnam War era M-79 or an M-203 rifle, at a vacant lot along the Mañara street. No one was reported killed or injured in the blast, but the incident triggered panic among villagers.

Tuesday night’s twin bombings came less than 24 hours after two unidentified motorcycle-riding men set off an unusual type of a “low-level explosive” fashioned from live shotgun shells.

The bomb exploded behind an outlet of a Jollibee fast-food restaurant along Sinsuat Avenue.

Balquin said investigators have yet to determine if an improvised explosive was indeed used in the bombing. He said that there is also a possibility that a shotgun was just fired near the restaurant, based on the lead pellets found near the supposed blast site.

On Monday, the BIFF attempted to destroy a bridge in Barangay Magaslong in Maguindanao's Datu Piang town.

The bandits set off at least eight live 81MM mortar rounds, which they strapped underneath the bridge and detonated from a distance using a mobile phone.

The explosion left thin cracks on the structure of the bridge and perforated one side of its concrete ramp, but government engineers declared that the structure was still passable to vehicles not more than 3,000 kilos.

Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao Gov. Mujiv Hataman has ordered the ARMM’s public works secretary, Engineer Emil Sadain, to initiate the repair.

Moro and Chinese merchants in the municipality condemned the BIFF’s attempt to blow up the bridge, branding it “satanic” and a total turnaround from Islamic teachings that oblige Muslims to help one another protect vital infrastructures, worship sites and private buildings, and even wildlife and forests, during armed conflicts.

Bobby Katambak, a newly-elected member of the Maguindanao provincial board, said members of their special action team (SAT), held an emergency meeting Tuesday afternoon and discussed the plight of thousands of evacuees displaced by the BIFF-Army encounters last Saturday. He said they also discussed measures that can stave off escalation of hostilities in the conflict-affected areas.

Katambak, chairman of the Sangguniang Panlalawigan’s peace and security committee, said SAT members also agreed to recommend to Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu, presiding chairman of the provincial peace and order council, the immediate activation of inter-agency groups to investigate last week’s spate of hostilities and study its immediate and deeper impact on the local communities.

Katambak said workers from the office of Mangudadatu are now distributing relief goods to evacuees now confined in makeshift evacuation sites in public school campuses and houses of their relatives in the town proper of Datu Piang and in safer areas in Saidona, a known haven of the BIFF.

Col. Dickson Hermoso, public affairs chief of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said military units in the two towns remain on full alert due to persistent diversionary attacks by the BIFF.

A group of bandits fired assault rifles at a roadside Army detachment at the border of Datu Piang and Saidona Tuesday morning, just as two motorcycle-riding men fired .45 caliber pistols at an off-duty soldier sweeping in the surroundings of another outpost nearby. The soldier managed to duck for cover, surviving the shooting frenzy with only a superficial wound.