Explosions cause panic in Maguindanao, North Cotabato towns

NORTH COTABATO, Philippines — A series of explosions ripped through the boundary of Tulunan, North Cotabato and S.K.Pendatun, Maguindanao on Monday morning, scaring voters in polling sites nearby.

Local officials said projectile grenades may have been used in the bombings. The grenades may have been fired from a distance and into the marshes separating Tulunan and S.K.Pendatun towns.

Superintendent Aldrin Gonzales, spokesman of Police Regional Office-12, said on Monday afternoon that the explosions were heard at Barangay Dungos in Tulunan.

He said no one was reported hurt in the explosions, but the incident caused panic among voters.

Chief Superintendent Graciano Mijares of the Police Regional Office-Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao said probers are now investigating the explosions that were also heard in S.K. Pendatun, located along the Liguasan Delta.

Reports reaching the offices of Mijares, who is ARMM’s regional police director, and Lt. Gen. Arnel Dela Vega of the 6th Infantry Division stated that a grenade also landed and went off in an open field near the campus of the Dunguan Elementary School in Pagalungan, Maguindanao.

In Datu Saudi, a politically-troubled town in Maguindanao, 18 teachers who volunteered to perform election duties balked and had themselves replaced by personnel of the provincial police due to tensions between feuding families who fielded candidates for barangay chairman.

Gonzalez said probers are also investigating the murder on Sunday of Mustre Aguib, a re-electionist barangay chairman in the seaside Palimbang town in Sultan Kudarat province.

Aguib, chairman of Barangay Mina in Palimbang, was on a motorcycle on his way home from the town proper when gunmen flagged him down and opened fire, killing him on the spot.

Gonzalez said their regional director, Chief Superintendent Marcelo Morales, has ordered the Sultan Kudarat provincial police to immediately prosecute his killers once identified.