7 troops hurt in Shariff Aguak bombing

MAGUINDANA, Philippines  --- Seven members of an Army  unit were injured in a roadside bombing past 9 a.m. Wednesday in the restive Shariff Aguak town in the province, Central Mindanao’s third bomb attack since Monday.

The seven soldiers, who belong to the Army’s 12th Mechanized Company, were riding a KM250 light truck on their way the town proper of Shariff Aguak from Barangay Nabundas, an interior area in the same town, when members of the brigand Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters detonated the explosive, made up of mortar projectiles and B-40 anti-tank rockets.

Col. Dickson Hermoso, spokesman of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said the bandits could have planted bomb along one side of the road the previous night.

Hermoso, quoting barangay folks, said the bomb was detonated from a distance using a mobile phone.

The bandits appeared to have targeted the light truck carrying the soldiers since they set off the bomb as the vehicle got close, after a French-made Fiat V-150 armored vehicle, ahead by more than 10 meters, had passed by.

The explosion crippled the Army vehicle after jagged metal fragments, bent six-inch nails and ball bearings wrapped around improvised explosive device pierced through its tires.

Hermoso said the injured soldiers are now undergoing medication in a hospital.

The incident came after Monday’s deadly explosion of a car bomb along Sinsuat Avenue in Cotabato City, and the bombing Wednesday dawn of a branch of the money remittance firm M Lhuillier in Midsayap town in the first district of North Cotabato.