Farmer killed, 5 hurt in Maguindanao del Sur grenade blast

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — A farmer was killed while five others were seriously hurt in a grenade explosion in the secluded Barangay Pilar in the mountainous South Upi town in Maguindanao del Sur before dawn Friday.

Citing a report from the South Upi Municipal Police Station, Brig. Gen. Allan Nobleza, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, told reporters via Viber message on Saturday that the blast resulted in the death of the 37-year-old Nestor Amborgo Jr. and hurt five of his companions.

The blast fatality Amborgo, Jemvoy Denuman, 47, Alvin Causrin, 38, Jimrod Mutiha, 41, Jem Amborgo, 30, and Joem Sentina, 34, were drinking together in the hinterland Sitio Mafran in Barangay Pilar, South Upi when a 40 millimeter grenade projectile fired from a distanced landed at right at their location and exploded.

Police and Army ordnance experts reported to Nobleza on Friday afternoon, after sifting through the blast scene extensively, that they found fragments of a 40 millimeter grenade projectile scattered right where the victims sat and shared food and drinks.

The projectile was fired from a distance using either a single-shot M79 launcher, or an M203 rifle,  the bomb experts dispatched to the faraway Barangay Pilar said in an initial report to Nobleza, copies of which were dispatched to reporters.

It took the team almost a day of on-site probing and travel to Barangay Pilar back and forth, according to Nobleza.

Barangay Pilar and nearby areas are bereft of telecommunications relay facilities.

There are heavily armed groups in many agricultural enclaves around Barangay Pilar squabbling for control of strategic patches of arable lands.  

Personnel of the South Upi MPS and barangay officials, in Pilar, mostly ethnic Tedurays, are cooperating in putting closure to the bombing incident.