COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Personnel of the Army’s 5th Special Forces Battalion seized six more improvised explosive devices found along trails crisscrossing abandoned hideouts of the Dawlah Islamiya in Shariff Saydona Mustapha town.
The IEDs were found in Barangay Pamalian, where the Dawlah Islamiya's former enclaves are now occupied by soldiers.
The recovered IEDs, rigged with battery-operated blasting contraptions that can be detonated from a distance using mobile phones, were immediately deactivated by Army bomb experts.
Units of the Army's 6th Infantry Division have collected more than 20 IEDs in clearing operations the past 10 days in the town, where the terror group had makeshift bomb-making facilities that soldiers destroyed with heavy artillery fire last week.