Power restored after 15-hour blackout in Central Mindanao, Cotabato

COTABATO CITY, Philippines – Supply of electricity to dozens of Central Mindanao towns and Cotabato City was restored noontime Friday following a 15-hour outage due to the destruction by saboteurs of a power relay pylon in Aleosan, North Cotabato.

Gunmen on Thursday night toppled down Tower 68 of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) in Barangay Pagangan in Aleosan town by setting off explosives they strapped on its four angular columns, detonated from a distance using mobile phones.

READ: Explosion hits North Cotabato power post

The attack caused a 15-hour blackout in dozens of towns in the adjoining North Cotabato and Maguindanao provinces and in all of the 37 barangays in Cotabato City.

North Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Talino-Mendoza, presiding chair of the provincial peace and order council, said local officials in Aleosan are now helping investigators establish the identities of the people behind the latest bombing of an NGCP facility.

No fewer than five towers of the NGCP in different North Cotabato towns were felled in one bombing after another in the past eight months.

Local officials tagged the brigand Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) as responsible for the attacks.

The BIFF, led by clerics trained in religious schools in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Libya, is not covered by the interim ceasefire pact between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Many BIFF commanders openly admits being sympathetic to the Independent State of Iraq and Syria.