93 rusty cannon rounds, explosive projectiles found in Jolo junkyard

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) ordnance experts had collected 93 unexploded cannons and other explosive projectiles found piled in a junk shop in an operation in Barangay Alat in Jolo town in Sulu on Monday, October 12.

The explosives, technically termed unexploded ordnance, also known by the acronym UXO in police and military parlance, that personnel of a PCG unit based in Sulu had seized, comprise cannon, mortar and grenade projectiles and a 500-pound World War 2 bomb, the kind that airplanes dropped on targets on the ground.

Army Major Gen. Jose Vladimir Cagara, acting commander of the Western Mindanao Command based in Zamboanga City, told reporters on Tuesday morning that the successful ordnance disposal operation by the Sulu-based PCG members, backed by military and police units in the province, was premised on tips by villagers in Barangay Alat about the presence of the rusty explosives in a junkyard in the area.

Local executives in Sulu had told reporters that the owner of the junk shop, who buys metal scraps and other recyclable wastes, is now undergoing procedural questioning by police investigators in Sulu and personnel of Army intelligence units in the island province to determine where the recovered UXOs came from.

Cagara said the recovered UXO shall be disposed of properly in a military-guarded site in Jolo.  

Jolo and towns around were scenes of deadly clashes between state security forces and guerillas of the secessionist Moro National Liberation Front from 1973 up to the 1980s.  It was in Sulu where the MNLF was organized in 1971 by Nur Misuari and his province-mates, among them members of big Tausug clans.

The government and the MNLF forged a final peace compact on September 2, 1996, brokered by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a bloc of more than 50 Muslim countries, including petroleum-exporting states in the Middle East and North Africa.