2 grenades found as Arroyo visits Iligan
By Ma. Cecilia Rodriguez
Mindanao Bureau
First Posted 12:03:00 01/07/2009
Filed Under: Acts of terror, Politics
ILIGAN CITY -- While President Macapagal Arroyo was distributing relief goods to flood victims here, two rifle grenades were found in an Iligan-bound bus Tuesday afternoon, police said.
Superintendent Emmanuel Jaraula, police chief of Gitagum town, revealed on Wednesday that they intercepted the bus along the Iligan-Cagayan highway after an unidentified caller said a bomb was put in the baggage compartment of the bus.
Jaraula could not say if the incident was related to Arroyo's visit but police tightened security in the entire region.
"Although it is not a bomb, it is explosive and deadly. It can kill or injure anyone within a 50-meter radius," Jaraula said.
The Rural Transit bus had 30 passengers when it departed from the Cagayan de Oro terminal at 4 p.m., Tuesday.
An hour later, the bus dispatcher received a text message that a bomb was placed in the bus. At the same time, Gitagum police received a telephone call about the bomb.
The rifle grenades were found hidden in a sack of clothes. A passenger, Jomar Cenas, who was traveling with his wife and three small children, owned the baggage but denied any knowledge of the explosives.
"I don't have any idea how those [grenades] got there. My wife said four men were carrying our things, they might have planted those inside the sack," Cenas told the Philippine Daily Inquirer, parent company of INQUIRER.net.
He and his family are now detained at the Gitagum police station.
Last December, Iligan was rocked by two bomb blasts that killed two and injured 45 others.
No suspects have been arrested but police and military said the extortion group Al-Khobar could be behind the bombings.
In a Cabinet meeting at the ancestral Macapagal home here Tuesday, President Arroyo ordered the regional police director, Superintendent Teodorico Capuyan, to step up the manhunt for the perpetrators of the bombing.
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