Soldiers kill IED courier on a bombing mission in Maguindanao

MAGUINDANAO, Philippines — Army intelligence agents killed in a shootout before dawn Wednesday a bomber carrying a powerful improvised explosive device.

The still unidentified motorcycle-riding IED courier was shot dead by personnel of the Army’s 602nd Brigade while en route to the center of Datu Montawal town in the second district of Maguindanao.

The bomber's companion driving their motorcycle had escaped.

Police Capt. Raz Pandulo of the Montawal municipal police station said Army bomb experts managed to immediately destroy the IED using a calibrated explosive disruptor.

“We are still trying to identify the duo and determine their group affiliation. We have hints on that but we have to validate first the information being fed by vigilant sectors,” Pandulo said.

Montawal town is near the 220,000-hectare Liguasan Delta, a known haven of the outlawed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, also known as the Dawlah Islamiya operating in the fashion of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

The IED the slain bomber was to bring somewhere possibly either in Maguindanao’s adjoining Pagalungan and Montawal towns or in nearby municipalities in North Cotabato was packed with fragments of metals with jagged edges and rigged with a blasting device that can be detonated from a distance using a mobile phone.