This time, bag in Pasay yields real explosives

Two days after a bag containing clothes caused a bomb scare and a five-hour traffic jam on Edsa in Pasay City, police recovered another bag in the city—this time containing real explosives.

A red plastic bag found around 4:35 a.m. Friday on Macapagal Boulevard yielded grenades and components for making a homemade bomb, according to the city police chief, Senior Supt. Rodolfo Llorca.

Found on the southbound lane near the bridge approaching the corner of Seaside Boulevard, it contained three MK-2 hand grenades, a plastic bottle wrapped in masking tape and filled with pyrotechnics powder, and a cell phone with a piece of wire jutting out.

The wire was wrapped in a piece of newspaper which was probably intended to serve as an improvised blasting cap, Llorca noted in a report to the Southern Police District.

“What was the intention? We can’t say because it was abandoned. Perhaps (whoever left it) saw of the nearest checkpoint,” SPD director Chief Supt. Jose Erwin Villacorte said in an interview.

Villacorte said the grenades still had their pins in place when found. “Maybe it was meant to scare people. It was meant to be picked up. We don’t know. We can think of many possibilities,” he added. Jaymee T. Gamil